Dangote Refinery Flips Nigeria’s Fuel Trade As Exports Surge 7-fold And Imports Fall Below 130,000 BPD

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Nigeria’s fuel trade has undergone a dramatic reversal since the arrival of the Dangote refinery, with petroleum product exports surging more than seven-fold while seaborne imports have fallen to less than a third of their 2023 level.

Nigeria exported an average of 350,000 barrels of petroleum products per day in the second quarter of 2026, up from an annual average of just 46,000 barrels per day in 2023, according to new data published by the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA).

At the same time, Nigeria’s seaborne petroleum product imports fell below 130,000 barrels per day, compared with nearly 400,000 barrels per day three years earlier.

The figures provide one of the clearest indications yet of how the Dangote Petroleum Refinery is changing a long-standing contradiction in Africa’s oil industry, where one of the continent’s major crude producers depended heavily on imported refined fuel.

Exports to Europe reached an average of 130,000 barrels per day in the second quarter, nearly nine times the 15,000 barrels per day shipped to the continent in 2023.

Nigeria also exported nearly 120,000 barrels per day to other African countries during the quarter, up from 89,000 barrels per day in 2025.

The EIA attributed much of the change to the Dangote refinery, which began operations in 2024.

Before the facility entered production, Nigeria’s existing state-owned refineries shipped less than 100,000 barrels per day of petroleum products by sea, both domestically and internationally.

Total seaborne petroleum product shipments from Nigeria, which include exports and shipments between Nigerian ports, averaged 561,000 barrels per day in the second quarter of 2026.

That compares with just 79,000 barrels per day in 2023.

The refinery’s growing output has allowed Nigeria to simultaneously…