Reduced petroleum product production from the Dangote Refinery due to maintenance caused a rebound in imports as the marketers resorted to European facilities to meet regional demands.

A report by S&P Global Commodities disclosed that petrol imports to Nigeria and Togo rose from 200,000 barrels daily in January to over 300,000 barrels per day in March, and 250,000 barrels in April, nearly the national daily consumption needs.

Dangote Refinery to restart full petrol production

Legit.ng earlier reported that the giant refinery had denied shutting down its petrol-process unit for maintenance.

According to the S&P report on Wednesday, May 14, 2025, the Lekki-based refinery is resuming its main petrol unit, and the residue fluid catalytic cracker (RFCC) and is considering a second turnaround.

The report quoted a Dangote official saying that the firm is about to return from a four-week turnaround to address the challenges.

It also revealed that the plant is increasing its RFCC, Alkylation, and polypropylene units, but has yet to determine whether a second maintenance would be necessary later in the year.

The company disclosed that it is ready to increase its polypropylene production in local and international markets.

Dangote Refinery to hit full production capacity

The report also disclosed that production from the Dangote Refinery became the measuring stick for global petrol cracks since it started production in September last year, and unscheduled maintenance resulted in a price rebound, as roughly 100,000 barrels daily of supply was dropped.

An executive of the refinery reportedly said the plant’s crude distillation unit last ran at 550,000 barrels per day, about 85% of its capacity.

The RFCC hit 70% of its capacity after starting production last year before the outage.

Per the report, the refinery now plans to increase the unit to its full capacity, allowing the site to increase crude throughput at the facility to its 650,000 bpd capacity.

Since the RFCC went offline, the mega facility was reportedly forced to rely on its 120,000 barrels per day reformer to serve local petrol demand in April.

The refinery also allegedly denied access to petrol cargoes and LPG during the outage, but since May 12, 2025, more supplies had been provided, the report revealed.

Other units continued to operate during the works, and the refinery has maintained consistent gasoil exports, aviation fuel, and residual fuel that would be processed at the RFCC.

Outgates plague the petrol processing unit

S&P disclosed that before the unit was shut down, Dangote executives were preparing for a month-long turnaround in June.

However, the refinery beat hopes by restarting the RFCC and bringing its first petrol to market in September last year.

However, the unit has suffered outages in 2025, delaying plans for its operations to stabilise.

A June RFCC turnaround at the refinery would support global petrol cracks by $3 per barrel.