As foreign exchange shortages bite harder at the Dangote Petroleum Refinery, an official of the company says the Federal Government has promised to make dollars available to the refinery to pay for crude oil.
According to the source, who pleaded for anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter, the Federal Government agreed on Friday to ensure the refinery gets enough dollars to pay crude suppliers as the naira-for-crude deal falters.
Under the new arrangement, The PUNCH exclusively gathered that the government would make dollars available to Dangote in exchange for the petrol it sold in naira, as the refinery had bought the crude oil in dollars.
The Dangote refinery was supposed to receive about 13 million barrels of crude monthly under the naira-for-crude deal. The refinery is to process the crude and supply the fuel to the Nigerian market in naira.
But the refinery said it had since been getting less than 35 per cent of this allocation monthly, thereby relying on crude imports from Ghana, the United States, Angola and others.
Despite buying crude in dollars, the refinery has been selling fuel to Nigerians in naira, thereby plunging the company into a forex crisis running into billions of dollars.
Speaking with our correspondent, a management official recalled that the shortage of forex led the refinery to its earlier decision to halt petrol sales in naira. But the source stated that the Federal Government has promised to supply enough dollars in exchange for the naira it made from fuel sales.
“As you know, we had earlier stopped selling in naira as we were not getting the dollars from the Central Bank of Nigeria for the products we sold for naira, even though we had paid in US dollars for the crude. Now, we have been assured that we will be given the dollars.
“The Federal Government has to give dollars to the extent we are selling the products in naira after paying for the crude in dollars. That’s the law,” the source said.
Confirming that the dollar being expected is in billions, the official queried where the refinery would get funds for crude importation.
“From where will we get the money to import the crude? The Americans, the Angolans, the Libyans, the Ghanaians and the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited don’t sell the crude to us in naira.
“Now you can understand why we stopped the naira sales earlier. How can we be sitting on huge amounts of naira when NNPC is not selling the crude to us in naira, except for some small quantity? The good thing is that, on Friday, the Federal Government promised to resolve it,” he added.
The Dangote Group had in July maintained that the crude volumes supplied under the naira-for-crude arrangement were inadequate to sustain naira-denominated fuel sales.
A source told The PUNCH that crude supply under the naira-for-crude arrangement had been limited to just four million barrels monthly despite the increase in Nigeria’s crude oil production.
The source said the refinery was now set to export a larger percentage of its products in exchange for foreign exchange.
The PUNCH reports that the Dangote refinery imported a total of 40.40 million barrels of crude oil between May and June 2026, spending about $4.48bn on feedstock purchases, according to an analysis of official cargo discharge and pricing records.
The data was released by the refinery to dispel rumours that refinery pricing moves in line with daily international crude oil prices. It said crude is purchased weeks or months in advance under contracts linked to monthly average pricing rather than spot market rates.
The figures show that the refinery imported 21.47 million barrels in May 2026 at a total landed cost of $2.68bn before receiving another 18.93 million barrels in June 2026 valued at $1.80bn.
Recall that the Dangote refinery in Lekki, Lagos State, faced crude supply challenges when it began operations in 2024.
The President of the Dangote Group, Alhaji Aliko Dangote, had cried out, saying some international oil companies were planning to sabotage the investment by refusing to supply crude. The Dangote Group alleged then that the IOCs insisted on selling crude oil to its refinery through their foreign agents.
It said the local price of fuel had continued to increase because the trading arms offered cargoes at $2 to $4 per barrel above the official price.
Concerned by the controversy, President Bola Tinubu, during a Federal Executive Council meeting on July 29, 2024, proposed the sale of crude oil to local refineries in naira.
The Federal Executive Council adopted the proposal by Tinubu to sell crude to the Dangote refinery and other upcoming refineries in the local currency. FEC approved that the 450,000 barrels meant for domestic consumption be offered in naira to Nigerian refineries, using the Dangote refinery as a pilot.
A media aide to the president, Bayo Onanuga, said in July that “the exchange rate will be fixed for the duration of this transaction”.
In the first quarter of 2025, the NNPC suspended the naira-for-crude deal, prompting the Dangote refinery to halt the sale of fuel in naira. However, the Federal Government intervened and declared that the deal should continue indefinitely.
But the Dangote refinery has always complained of not getting enough crude in naira to justify selling fuel in the local currency. Officials of the Federal Government have yet to respond to messages seeking further details about the naira-dollar swap.
