By MyEngineers
Fresh figures from the Nigerian Midstream and Downstream Petroleum Regulatory Authority, NMDPRA point to a continued dependence on imported gasoline blendstock at the Dangote Petroleum Refinery, even as the facility benefits from rising volumes of crude oil sourced both locally and abroad.
A review of the NMDPRA’s Midstream and Downstream Petroleum Statistics for May 2026 shows that the 650,000-barrels-per-day plant brought in roughly 1.46 billion litres of intermediates and gasoline blendstock between January and May. This came despite the refinery’s continued access to both domestic and imported crude supplies.
According to the report, this imported feedstock has been instrumental in helping the refinery maintain a daily petrol output of 44.7 million litres, with capacity utilisation touching 101.25 per cent in May, a figure that exceeds the plant’s nameplate design capacity.
What gasoline blendstock actually is
Gasoline blendstock isn’t a finished product sold at the pump. Rather, it’s an intermediate petroleum stream like reformate, alkylate, naphtha, and other high-octane components, that gets blended with other refinery outputs and additives to produce Premium Motor Spirit (PMS) meeting required octane, quality, and environmental thresholds.
By folding these blendstocks into the refining process, a plant can push out more finished petrol than crude processing alone would allow. This becomes especially useful when local demand is high or when a refiner wants to squeeze maximum value from particular product streams.
Month-by-month breakdown
Per the data, blendstock imports for the five months broke down as follows:
- January: 658.31 million litres
- February: 306.89 million litres
- March: 102.35 million litres
- April: 147.37 million litres
- May: 240.59 million litres
Total: approximately 1.46 billion litres
The figures reveal a three straight months of decline from January through March, followed by a rebound in April and May. The jump from April to May alone was 63.3 per cent, pointing to a renewed appetite for blendstock as production ramped up.
Crude supply versus blendstock imports
Interestingly, the rebound in blendstock imports during April and May didn’t coincide with a crude shortfall. In May, the refinery received 17.92 million barrels of crude comprising 15.84 million barrels domestic and 2.08 million barrels imported. That’s only marginally below April’s total of 18.37 million barrels (17.96 million domestic, 410,000 imported).
In fact, running the numbers shows that at full nameplate capacity over a 31-day month, the refinery would need around 20.15 million barrels of crude. May’s crude receipts of 17.92 million barrels fell short of that mark. Yet utilisation still came in above 100 per cent.
The broader trend across the five months tells a similar story: crude receipts climbed from 9.53 million barrels in January to a high of 20.92 million barrels in March, then eased to 17.92 million barrels by May. Notably, January — the month with the lowest crude receipts also recorded the highest blendstock import volume of the year, suggesting the refinery leaned on imports to cover for an unstable crude supply chain early in the year. As crude flows stabilised in February and March, blendstock imports fell correspondingly. But the reversal in April and May, even with crude supply holding steady, suggests other factors that is likely a push to sustain or exceed full capacity were driving the renewed import appetite.
Other output figures for May
Beyond petrol, the NMDPRA report detailed production across other fuel categories:
- PMS (petrol): 44.7 million litres/day produced; 41.5 million litres/day supplied domestically; 9.4 million litres in closing stock.
- AGO (diesel): 24.5 million litres/day produced; 18.2 million litres/day sold locally; 6.5 million litres/day exported.
- Aviation fuel (Jet A1): 21.9 million litres/day produced; 2.8 million litres/day supplied domestically; 17.5 million litres/day exported.
State refineries still idle
The report also confirmed that Nigeria’s three state-owned refineries — Port Harcourt, Warri, and Kaduna — remained under shutdown status as of May 2026, leaving Dangote as the country’s only major operational refining hub and its largest source of locally refined fuel.
Expert take: a global norm, but not without trade-offs
Speaking on the development, Professor of Energy at the University of Lagos, Dayo Ayoade, described blendstock imports as a routine part of refinery operations worldwide, used to lift fuel quality and keep processing units running efficiently.
“Gasoline feedstocks are unfinished petroleum streams such as straight run naphtha, butane, reformate, fluid catalytic gasoline and different types of streams that are basically combined and blended eventually to meet the regulatory standards of Premium Motor Spirit, which the Petroleum Industry Act alludes to,” he said.
“This is actually common practice all over the world; there is no issue. It is not cheating or any problems. Like all refineries in the world, blended gasoline feedstock will allow a refinery to improve the quality of its petroleum products e.g., Euro V quality fuel that has low sulphur, which is the acceptable type of fuel we need in the market now.”
He added that blendstocks give refiners flexibility to keep secondary processing units such as catalytic crackers running at full capacity, particularly useful when crude supply isn’t perfectly stable.
“It is also used to optimise the operational base of the refinery because they use it to maximise the output of the refinery units like the catalytic crackers or hydrocarbon crackers to ensure that they are producing. The refinery also wants the secondary unit to work at full capacity, so when they import the kind of blends, it will allow the refinery to continue to work, especially where crude supply is not as stable as you would want it to be.”
“The only issue is what is likely the production impact. There are larger consequences of costs. The refinery is now at capacity, but the importation means we are leaking foreign exchange. So money is leaving Nigeria to buy things from international markets and then being exposed to the risks of the international market. The importation also allows detractors or enemies of the refinery to say that the refinery is importing finished PMS, which is not true.” he said.
Why This Matters
This data offers a useful information on a narrative that has become common in Nigeria: that the Dangote Refinery has fully solved the country’s fuel-import problem simply because it now produces petrol domestically.
Importing gasoline blendstock is not the same as importing finished petrol and it’s not evidence of fraud or underperformance. Refineries everywhere do this to hit quality specifications and keep secondary units running.
There’s also a practical signal in the timing of these imports. The fact that blendstock intake rose in April and May suggests the refinery is using imports as a lever to push utilisation above 100 per cent, rather than purely as a stopgap for crude shortages.
Finally, Dangote remains the only real domestic refining option of scale.