The Chief Executive Officer of Dangote Refinery, David Bird, has said the facility is receiving far below its agreed crude oil supply under the Federal Government’s crude-for-naira arrangement.

Bird disclosed this during an interview on ARISE News on Wednesday, noting that the refinery currently gets only about five cargoes of crude monthly, against an expected 13 to 15 cargoes.

He said the shortfall has affected the refinery’s ability to fully optimise local crude supply despite existing agreements.

“What we see under that agreement, we should be getting about 13 to 15 cargoes a month. And that’s what we could process to meet the domestic fuel requirements of Nigeria. Currently, we’re only getting five. So, that’s an underperformance against that pre-agreed volume contract,” he said.
According to him, the gap has forced the refinery to source preferred Nigerian crude grades from the international market at higher costs.

“And that value between the purchase price and the premium that we’re now seeing is money that Nigeria is leaking to the international trading community,” he said.

He explained that the crude-for-naira policy was designed to stabilise Nigeria’s foreign exchange market rather than provide financial advantages to the refinery, noting that the company still purchases crude at international benchmark prices.

Just to start on the crude for Naira, crude for Naira is not there to benefit Dangote Refinery. That is a fundamental misunderstanding. The crude for Naira programme is to provide resilience to foreign exchange.

“It is the benefit of the country to process domestic crude in the domestic currency,” Bird said.

Despite the supply challenges, Bird said the refinery is currently operating at its full installed capacity of 650,000 barrels per day, supplying both domestic and regional markets.

He, however, noted that global oil market disruptions, particularly tensions in the Middle East, have increased operational costs across the refinery’s value chain, including freight, insurance and logistics.

Bird added that fuel pricing remains tied to international market forces, stressing that the refinery operates without subsidies or discounts on crude inputs.

He called for improved crude allocation and long-term strategic planning, including building national reserves, to strengthen supply chain resilience in Nigeria’s oil sector.