Dangote Petroleum Refinery plans to stop selling Premium Motor Spirit (PMS) to major marketers that hold valid petrol import licences, industry sources said.
The move is aimed at companies still bringing in imported petrol even though more fuel is now being refined inside Nigeria. According to figures cited by the refinery, imported PMS made up about 43 per cent of total petrol supply in July. That, Dangote argues, is shrinking the local market available to Nigerian refiners.
Sources say the refinery will now give priority to marketers that do not hold import licences. Marketers that continue to import under the Federal Government’s approved regime may no longer be supplied by Dangote.
The six companies licensed by the Nigerian Midstream and Downstream Petroleum Regulatory Authority (NMDPRA) to import PMS are:
Matrix Energy
A.A. Rano
AYM Shafa
NIPCO
Pinnacle Oil and Gas
Bono Energy
Their licences, issued in May, cover a combined 720,000 metric tonnes, with individual allocations of between 60,000 and 150,000 tonnes.
Dangote’s concern is partly about quality. Sources said imported petrol of uncertain standard could be blended with locally refined PMS before it reaches filling stations. That would make it hard for buyers and regulators to tell Dangote fuel apart from imported product and could damage the refinery’s brand if quality complaints arise.
The refinery also questions whether NMDPRA has enough laboratory capacity to properly test imported petrol.
The decision marks a sharper turn in Dangote’s long-running argument against continued petrol imports. The company has previously warned that if imports keep coming in, it may send more of its own refined products abroad rather than store large volumes of unsold PMS at high cost.
For the market, the result could be a split supply system: Dangote selling mainly to non-importing marketers, while licensed importers rely more on cargoes from abroad. That may change depot availability, cargo demand and prices in different parts of the country.
The government issued the import licences to keep supply secure and maintain competition. Dangote’s position is that those same imports undermine investment in local refining.