Billionaire Dangote’s refinery got 94m barrels of local oil

Nigerian oil producers supplied 94.43 million barrels of crude to billionaire Aliko Dangote’s refinery near Lagos in 2025, the country’s upstream oil regulator said, giving the first full-year figure for how much of the plant’s oil came from home.

The volume, disclosed this week by the Nigerian Upstream Petroleum Regulatory Commission, works out to about 259,000 barrels a day. That is about 40% of the refinery’s nameplate capacity of 650,000 barrels a day.

Ship-tracking data show crude deliveries to the refinery averaged about 410,000 barrels a day in 2025, or roughly 150 million barrels over the year. On that basis, Nigerian producers supplied a little over three-fifths of the oil the plant received, and the rest was imported, much of it from the United States.

More oil from home this year

Supply from Nigerian fields has risen since then. More than 127 million barrels of Nigerian crude and condensate went to domestic refineries in the first nine months of 2026, Oritsemeyiwa Eyesan, chief executive officer of the commission, said at an energy conference in Lagos on Oct. 26. Deliveries reached 53.7 million barrels in the second quarter, 97.4% of the expected level, and 45.1 million barrels in the third quarter, or 76.2%.

The Petroleum Industry Act of 2021 requires the regulator to set aside crude for local refiners before it is exported, a rule Dangote pushed hard to have enforced after complaining for years that he could not buy enough oil at home. The commission is now consulting on a swap system that would let refineries take suitable crude from nearby fields or export terminals instead of distant grades, which Eyesan said could cut costs by $3 to $4 a barrel.

The refinery took in a record 735,000 barrels a day in October, with Nigerian grades making up about 80% of deliveries and U.S. West Texas Intermediate most of the rest. Receipts averaged about 590,000 barrels a day from January to October.

A bigger plant

Dangote plans to spend about $14.3 billion to double the refinery’s capacity to 1.4 million barrels a day by 2029, which would roughly double its need for crude. The plant began producing petrol in September 2024 and now supplies most of the petrol sold in Nigeria.

Dangote Petroleum Refinery and Petrochemicals FZE raised about ₦2.15 trillion ($1.58 billion) in an initial public offering that closed on Oct. 27, and its shares are expected to start trading on the Nigerian Exchange in December.

Dangote, 69, is Africa’s richest person, with a net worth of $55.4 billion, according to Forbes. He also controls Dangote Cement Plc, Africa’s largest cement producer.

Figures were converted at ₦1,365 to the dollar.