Nigeria’s local petrol production has surged from virtually zero in 2023 to approximately 48 million litres per day, the federal government has revealed.
Mrs Olu Verheijen, Special Adviser to the President on Oil and Gas, disclosed this while speaking at the Nigerian-British Chamber of Commerce Energy Day 2026 in Lagos, themed “Energy in Nigeria: From Potential to Reality.”
Verheijen said that for the first time in a generation, the majority of petrol consumed in Nigeria is now refined domestically — a development she described as a turning point for both energy security and currency stability.
“For decades, every cargo of imported petrol was a standing demand for scarce dollars, a structural drain that weakened our currency,” she said.
“As local refining has risen, that drain has eased: petrol imports fell from about N2.3 trillion in the first quarter of 2025 to under N90 billion a year later. Fewer dollars spent on fuel means less pressure on the naira. Energy security and currency stability are not separate goals — they are the same goal.”
On crude oil production, Verheijen said Nigeria averaged 1.64 million barrels per day in 2025 — an increase of roughly 400,000 barrels per day since 2023 and the highest onshore output in two decades.
She also disclosed that over four billion dollars in international oil company divestments had been concluded, deepening indigenous participation in onshore operations while major firms refocused on deepwater and integrated gas.
“Pipeline uptime is now consistently high, and illegal refining has been sharply reduced. Every additional barrel matters — for revenue, for jobs, and for the strength of the federation,” she said.
Reflecting on the state of the sector when the Tinubu administration took office in 2023, Verheijen said it was under severe strain — with unsustainable subsidies, foreign exchange distortions, declining production, and power-sector debt choking the gas-to-power supply chain.
She said the administration’s decision to remove the fuel subsidy and reform the exchange rate, though difficult, yielded tangible results.
“Total federation revenue rose to about N21 trillion in 2024, up from roughly N12 trillion in 2023 — nearly doubling in a single year,” she said, adding that the government had also succeeded in eliminating the chronic petrol queues that once plagued the country.
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