DANGOTE Petroleum Refinery and Petrochemicals has again reviewed its ex-depot (gantry) loading cost of petrol to ₦865 per litre.
The ICIR confirmed that the refinery management informed its marketers and customers of the slash on Thursday, April 10.
The price reduction, energy analysts said, is connected to the global drop in oil price, with oilprice.com affirming the current Brent crude oil price at $ 63.86 per barrel.
“What the Federal Government is losing through the drop in global oil price, with a sharp drop from the budget benchmark of $75/barrel, is a gain to the domestic market which must inadvertently see price drop for Nigerian consumers,” an oil sector governance expert, Oft Henry Ademola Adigun told The ICIR.
Other economic watchers noted that the drop is also linked to a meeting between representatives of the Dangote Refinery and the Minister of Finance and the Coordinating Minister for the Economy, Wale Edun, on Tuesday, over the naira-for-crude policy.
“The policy will firm up the naira against the dollar and serve as a hedge to the volatility of the naira against the dollar. This policy will encourage local indigenous petroleum refiners,” an energy analyst, Kingsley Obiakor, said.
At the end of the meeting, the coordinating Minister of the Economy said that the naira-for-crude was still in effect and that the initiative was not a temporary measure but a “key policy directive designed to support sustainable local refining.”
The government also said the initiative is still in effect and will continue immediately, overruling the decision of the NNPCL under its former boss, Mele Kyari, who tenured the initiative.
Recall that as part of moves to reduce the strain on the US dollar and guarantee price stability of petroleum products, the Federal Executive Council (FEC) in July 2024 directed the NNPCL to sell crude oil to Dangote Refinery and other local refineries in naira and not in the United States greenback.
However, in March 2025, the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPCL) said its Naira-denominated crude sales agreement with the Dangote Refinery was structured for six months, with March 2025 as the expiration date. Subsequently, the $20 billion Dangote Refinery temporarily halted the sale of petroleum products in Naira.
“This decision is necessary to avoid a mismatch between our sales proceeds and our crude oil purchase obligations, which are currently denominated in US dollars,” the company had said in a statement reported earlier by The ICIR.
The pump price of petrol jumped from around ₦860 to about ₦1,000, making consumers pay at least ₦70 more than what it used to cost them to buy a litre of the premium commodity days earlier.
The refinery, however, said it would resume the sale of its product to the local market in Naira as soon as it received crude cargoes from the NNPCL in Naira.
Days later, President Bola Tinubu fired Kyari and the entire NNPCL board.
In their stead, the president appointed an 11-man board with Bashir Ojulari as the Group Chief Executive Officer and Ahmadu Kida as non-executive chairman.
The resumption of Naira-denominated crude sales, experts believe, would reduce the strain on the US dollar and guarantee the price stability of petroleum products.
The ICIR had reported that Wale Edun said the federal government is committed to full implementation of the naira-for-crude as a policy to maximise the benefits of supporting sustainable local refining in the country
Harrison Edeh is a journalist with the International Centre for Investigative Reporting, always determined to drive advocacy for good governance through holding public officials and businesses accountable.