Nigeria earned N998.50bn from petrol exports, known as motor spirit (ordinary) or Premium Motor Spirit, in the first six months of 2026. Analysts say the Dangote Petroleum Refinery’s ramp-up and the war in Iran turned a commodity that once topped the import bill into one of the country’s leading exports.
The National Bureau of Statistics’ trade statistics report, released in the second quarter of 2026, showed that N621.72bn of earnings came from African trading partners.
In Q2 2026, PMS ranked seventh among Nigeria’s top exports with N546.02bn, a 2.02 per cent share of total exports. Crude oil led with N12.91tn (47.79 per cent), followed by kerosene-type jet fuel at N2.94tn, natural gas at N2.82tn, urea at N2.12tn, other petroleum gases at N1.89tn and gas oil at N1.32tn.
Nigeria’s fuel export story was different a year earlier. PMS did not rank among the top exports in Q1 2025 but featured among the top imports, as Nigeria spent N1.76tn buying the product. It resurfaced on the export list in Q2 2025 with earnings of N85.83bn, meaning Q2 2026 receipts were more than six times higher.
In separate interviews with The PUNCH, experts explained how Dangote Refinery eased the need to import PMS and powered the export drive. Investment research analyst Abeeblahi Rufai said the limited exports in Q1 2025 reflected a lack of surplus product.
Rufai said, “The limited PMS exports in Q1’25 reflected the absence of an exportable refined product surplus. Nigeria remained a heavy importer of petrol, spending N1.76trn on PMS imports in the quarter, which indicates that domestic demand was still absorbing Dangote Refinery’s output.”
He noted that outages and maintenance at the refinery’s Residue Fluid Catalytic Cracking unit also constrained gasoline production. An RFCC unit is an advanced secondary conversion unit in an oil refinery that breaks down extremely heavy, low-value residual oils into high-value products like gasoline, diesel, and liquefied petroleum gas.
The analyst added that domestic supply obligations under the naira-for-crude arrangement and political pressure to prioritise the local market further limited export opportunities.
He explained that the export surge that followed had two causes: the ramp-up of the Dangote Refinery and the impact of the Iran war on global refined-product availability.
According to the analyst, African countries had depended heavily on refined products from suppliers in the Middle East, Asia and Europe. These included the United Arab Emirates through ADNOC, Saudi Arabia through Saudi Aramco, Oman and India, which supplied East African markets such as Kenya and Tanzania.
Rufai said the Dangote Refinery’s proximity to African markets gave it a logistical edge, as shorter shipping distances cut freight and logistics costs.
Explaining how the Iran war catalysed the fuel export surge, he said, “The Iran war of H1’26 was a second catalyst. Disruptions to energy flows via the Middle East, including the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, have constrained supplies to key Asian and European markets, prompting some countries to curb refined-product exports.”
He said sanctions limited Russia’s ability to fill the gap, while Ukrainian attacks on its refining infrastructure reduced the availability of its products. This tightened global refined-product markets and raised demand for supplies from refineries outside the conflict area.
“In this respect, Dangote became an emerging alternative source of PMS to the African markets. Its geographic proximity also lowered the logistics premium compared with supplies from Europe and the Middle East, making Nigerian-origin refined products more attractive to regional buyers,” Rufai said.
Similarly, a Senior Analyst at CardinalStone Securities, Tomiwa Adeniji, said Nigeria’s decades-long reliance on imported fuel, despite being a crude producer, reflected inadequate refining capacity and low utilisation.
She said the country’s refining capacity had moved from about 400,000 barrels per day at roughly one per cent utilisation before the Dangote Refinery began operations to 1.1 million barrels per day at about 62 per cent utilisation.
Adeniji said the refinery began PMS production in September 2024, but low capacity utilisation during its ramp-up constrained availability. “Nigeria has now transitioned to being a net exporter of refined petroleum products,” Adeniji said.
An economist and Chief Executive Officer of Economic Associates, Dr Ayo Teriba, affirmed that the trend followed the refinery’s initial focus on the domestic market.
“Dangote Refinery started with import substitution. So you find that it is now supplying at least more than 50 per cent of local requirements. It is now therefore easing the need to import PMS and in the medium term eliminates importation of PMS,” Teriba said.
He said the refinery then began exporting PMS, diesel and aviation fuel, all of which Nigeria previously imported. “Such that an item that had dominated our import list is now beginning to diminish in our import list and is now emerging as a dominant commodity in our export story,” Teriba said.
Teriba said the energy and petroleum resources refining story was evolving and would not differ across PMS, diesel, aviation fuel and urea.
The surge may expand further as the Federal Government deepens oil exploration to increase supply, which in turn feeds the refineries. The Minister of State for Petroleum Resources (Oil), Heineken Lokpobiri, said policies under President Bola Tinubu had increased local participation in Nigeria’s hydrocarbon production. He spoke to journalists in Abuja on Monday.
Lokpobiri said indigenous companies now account for 60 per cent of oil production, against the 80 to 90 per cent once held by international oil companies. “Before now, it used to be 90 per cent IOCs. Right now, we have 60 per cent indigenous companies accounting for the production we have in Nigeria. That means 60 per cent retention of value in the country,” Lokpobiri said.
He said the international oil companies had not left Nigeria but had divested from onshore, swamp and shallow-water assets to focus on deep offshore operations, with Nigerian firms taking over the divested assets.
The minister said active drilling rigs had risen from between 10 and 14 to over 65, and that the country aims to produce at least three million barrels of crude oil per day in the coming years.
