LAGOS (Reuters) -Nigeria’s Dangote Petroleum Refinery, Africa’s largest oil refinery, is ramping up output to meet national petrol and diesel demand, it said on Saturday, after the government approved a new import tariff on fuel aimed at protecting domestic production.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n The continent’s top oil producer has long sought to end its reliance on imported fuel, and the 15% import duty seeks to safeguard recent multi-billion-dollar investments in domestic refining, the government said in a memo announcing the measure this week.<\/p>\n
\n Anthony Chiejina, a spokesperson of the Dangote Group, which spent $20 billion to build the 650,000 barrels-per-day refinery, said the tariff initiative would discourage the dumping of substandard fuel products.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n The Dangote Refinery, which launched operations last year but has struggled in the face of competition from cheap imports, is in the process of boosting output, he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n “Our refinery is currently loading over 45 million litres of petrol and 25 million litres of diesel daily which exceeds Nigeria’s demand,” Chiejina said.<\/p>\n
\n Since commencing petrol production in September 2024, the refinery has helped bring down pump prices and eliminate fuel shortages. But local fuel traders say the price reductions are part of a strategy to undercut them.<\/p>\n
\n They warned that the tariff measure, if poorly implemented, could cripple fuel importation and create a refining monopoly, making Nigeria vulnerable to fuel scarcity in the long term.<\/p>\n
\n “Importers of petroleum products, which were a price-check mechanism against profiteering, will be out of business if not properly managed,” said Billy Harry, head of the Petroleum Products Retail Outlets Owners Association of Nigeria.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n “If local refineries are not properly regulated, monopoly could harm the market,” he added.<\/p>\n
\n (Reporting by Isaac Anyaogu)<\/p>\n
\n By Isaac Anyaogu<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LAGOS (Reuters) -Nigeria’s Dangote Petroleum Refinery, Africa’s largest oil refinery, is ramping up output to meet national petrol…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":113226,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[138,219,220,111,139,69],"class_list":["post-113225","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-economy","tag-business","tag-economy","tag-markets","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113225","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=113225"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113225\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/113226"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=113225"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=113225"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=113225"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}