Dangote, NUPRC feud escalates despite leadership change at commission 

Agency indicts refinery over low fuel  supply

The simmering dispute between the Dangote Refinery and the Nigerian Midstream Downstream Petroleum Regulatory Authority (NMDPRA)has flared up with no sign of letting up.

The two warring sides are presently at loggerheads over the current production capacity at the 650,000 barrels per day Dangote Refinery in the Ibeju-Lekki area of Lagos and its actual contribution to Nigeria’s fuel needs.

The two sides have been making claims and counter claims on the refinery’s actual petrol output. While the refinery claimed it has enough fuel in its storage and that fuel tankers have been loading over 50 million litres of petrol daily from its gantry for local consumption, the NMDPRA is giving a much lower figure.

According to the NMDPRA in its November 2025 Fact Sheet, Nigeria’s average petrol consumption in November 2025 stood at about 52.9 million litres per day. This figure exceeded the long-standing national benchmark of 50 million liters per day.

The agency also claimed that imported fuel accounted for 73 per cent of Nigeria’s premium motor spirit consumption in November 2025. This means that Dangote Refinery supplied an estimated 18 million to 23.5 million litres per day in  November 2025, an amount that is well below its reported output of 35 million liters per day.

The implication of the NMDPRA’s latest figures is that domestic supply remains both unstable and inadequate.

Facts Behind The Figures

NMDPRA’s supply and consumption data have pitched the management of the two organizations against each other, with each side justifying its numbers.

BH recalled that the latest feud between the two parties is a continuation of a public altercation between the President of Dangote Industries Limited (DIL), Alhaji Aliko Dangote and the former NMDPRA CEO, Farouk Ahmed, over the agency’s underreporting of Dangote’s fuel figures, and the continued issuance of licences to marketers to import petroleum products.

The conflict eventually led to the unexpected sacking of the NMDPRA’s boss by President Bola Tinubu in  December 2025.

Speaking recently at a media event in Lagos, where he faulted NMDPRA’s data, a visibly angry Aliko Dangote claimed the industry regulator was not telling Nigerians the truth.

He challenged the agency to send a team to the refinery to verify its fuel production and availability status.

“The regulator is very smart. What it is doing is telling Nigerians what was being taken out of the refinery. What has been taken out of the refinery is totally different from what has been produced.

“When we got tired of all this misleading information, we wrote him a letter telling him to come every day to check our stock and publish what we produce and what we have in stock.

“Now, you come every day, check our stock, which we don’t want to share before because people can take a position on that, you know, stocks.

“That’s how the market works. But we don’t even mind losing money. So, that Nigerians can be assured that there’s more than enough to supply the domestic market,” Dangote said.

While Dangote Refinery and NMDPRA’s officials are busy justifying their fuel supply figures, BH findings revealed that NMDPRA’s supplied data on the actual fuel consumption figures in the country and who supplied what can not hold ground when juxtaposed with available facts.

For instance, multiple sources confirmed to our correspondent that Dangote’s fuel has gained more inroad into the Nigerian market in the last six months than acknowledged by the regulator, yet it has not changed things much and left room for import by marketers.

Manipulating Supply And Price

Multiple sources, including marketers lifting oil from the refinery and news channels reporting on activities at the mammoth plant, confirmed that the refinery has actually been loading over 1,000 tankers of petrol meant for the local market in the last three months.

An official of the Petroleum Tanker Drivers (PTD) branch of the Nigeria Union of Petroleum and Natural Gas Workers (NUPENG), Dangote Refinery branch, who did not want his identity disclosed, told our correspondent the union has stumps of old receipts issued to their members, who loaded petrol at the refinery to confirm to confirm Dangote’s account.

“While we won’t like to take sides with any of the two feuding parties, I can confirm to you that Dangote’s claims that over 1,000 fuel tankers load daily at his refinery is true.

“I can confirm this because we issue tickets to all the trucks that enter the facility to load. And we have stumps of tickets issued to our members to prove this.

“The least capacity truck the refinery attend to is 33,000 liters. If you multiply 33,000 liters by one thousand trucks, that gives us 33 million litres. Yet, we have bigger capacity trucks of 45,000 and 60,000 litres that come in daily to also lift petrol.

“These tankers and their contents are not ghosts. They have drivers, mechanics, who work on them, and they discharge their fuel somewhere. These are all verifiable.

“So, NMDPRA can’t tell us that Dangote Refinery has been supplying less that 30 million petrol into the market. That argument won’t fly”, the union executive stated.

However, 33m liters is still lower than the 50 million liters, which Dangote is expected to supply to stabilize price and stop imports, as experts claim that the short fall in supply by Dangote is the reason price is still high and justifies import by marketers.

Refinery Now Major Importer

BH reliably gathered that the industry regulator may have capitalized on the ongoing repair works on a gasoline production unit in the refinery, which has slowed down petrol production to issue more licences to importers to import fuel, a decision it must justify, thus the huge monthly fuel import figures.

The faulty unit, a fuel catalytic unit meant for petrol production has remained grounded while repair work continue on it.

Meanwhile, the refinery has been importing gasoline components and naphtha for blending to sustain petrol output, according to shipping and trade-flow data.

According to energy intelligence platform, OilPrice.com, gasoline components are unfinished or semi-finished petroleum products that cannot be sold directly to consumers.

The feedstock requires blending with other refinery streams to meet PMS specifications before distribution to retailers across Nigeria.

Shipping records obtained by BH show that, at least, two Medium Range (MR) product tankers carrying gasoline components discharged at the Dangote Refinery in January.

One of the vessels chartered to Dangote Refinery, Ion M, which loaded 38,000 metric tonnes of gasoline blendstock at Immingham in the United Kingdom, a major Northwest European export hub, arrived at the refinery’s Lekki terminal on Wednesday, January 21, 2025.

The second tanker, Silver Ginny, which also lifted 38,000-metric-tonne cargo of gasoline components from Lavera, France, arrived on Sunday, January 25.

According to shipping data, another vessel, St. Nenne, operated by Vitol, discharged condensate and naphtha at Dangote Refinery between 16 and 17 January for gasoline blending operations

Available records indicate that the vessel, which carried a cargo of 30,000 metric tonnes of condensate and 6,000 metric tonnes of naphtha,  had anchored at the refinery’s terminal on 14 January, 2025, after loading ex-Ningbo under a Bonny-linked trade route and was listed as the next vessel scheduled for discharge at the facility.