A tanker has transported gasoline from Nigeria’s newly inaugurated Dangote refinery to waters off Togo, in a significant development for Africa’s energy market.
The shipment, carried by the CL Jane Austen, marks a pivotal moment in the refinery’s operations, signaling its potential to reshape regional petrol markets.
According to data from Vortexa, Kpler, Precise Intelligence, and ship-tracking reports compiled by Bloomberg, the vessel loaded over 300,000 barrels of gasoline from the Dangote refinery and sailed west.
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The tanker is currently stationed off the coast of Lomé, a well-known hub for ship-to-ship (STS) transfers, sparking speculation about the final destination of its cargo.
Although this initial export is modest compared to the scale of the global gasoline market, it underscores the ramp-up of production at the 650,000-barrel-per-day refinery, the largest in Africa.
Championed as a project to end Nigeria’s import dependence for fuel, the 650,000 b/d refinery had been widely expected to market all of its gasoline domestically to service roughly 340,000 b/d of local demand.
However, since beginning gasoline production in September and significantly improving the quality of its fuel in October, rising prices have meant the refinery has struggled to shift its supply. Facing a fivefold increase in prices at the pump from the previous year, locals have warned that fuel affordability has been severely challenged, while the regulator, the NMDPRA, said in August that demand could drop by as much as a quarter year-on-year.
On Oct. 29, refinery CEO Aliko Dangote complained that the refinery was wasting money by holding over 500 million liters (around 3.1 million barrels) of fuel in storage. The company has blamed illicit low-quality imports for undercutting its prices and threatened to sue state oil company NNPC for continuing its fuel imports.
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In the first week of November, the refinery made its first attempt to sell gasoline abroad, issuing a public tender for the fuel type, but later appeared to bow to public pressure by revoking the offer.
Three West African traders said the refinery initially issued a tender to sell 40,000 mt of gasoline, which two confirmed specified product with a sulfur content of 150 parts per million.
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