Dangote Refinery boosts Nigeria’s refining sector to 44% growth in second quarter

Output from Aliko Dangote’s $20 billion refinery pushed Nigeria’s domestic oil refining to its fastest pace on record in the second quarter of 2026, delivering fresh gains across Africa’s most populous economy. Data released by the National Bureau of Statistics showed the country’s oil refining sector grew 43.94 percent year-on-year in the three months through June.

Nigeria refining growth surges 43.94%

The surge reflects higher processing runs at Dangote Petroleum Refinery following plant upgrades completed in February, which raised the facility’s crude distillation capacity from 650,000 barrels per day to 700,000 barrels per day.

The expansion has reshaped Nigeria’s energy trade, shifting the nation from a chronic importer of refined motor fuels into an active exporter supplying buyers across Europe, Asia and other African markets. According to the rebased gross domestic product figures, the refining sector’s expansion gathered pace through 2025 and into the first half of 2026.

Refining activity climbed 37.46 percent in the first quarter of 2025 before accelerating to the current 43.94 percent mark That is well above performance in late 2024, when annual growth stood at 19.42 percent in the third quarter and 12.33 percent in the fourth quarter.

Nigeria local refining output doubles

In current basic prices, the gross value of local refining reached about N5.36 billion ($4.01 million) in the second quarter of 2026, more than doubling from roughly N2.46 billion in the previous quarter. That generated a 90.85 percent nominal year-on-year jump, building on a 57.06 percent increase in the first quarter.

A steadier flow of domestic feedstock supported the plant’s operating rates. Between April and June, crude oil and condensate deliveries to domestic plants hit 53.7 million barrels, meeting 97.4 percent of total local refining demand. Dangote absorbed the bulk of those volumes.

Upstream producers offered 68.1 million barrels against the plant’s 63 million barrel quarterly requirement. The refinery took delivery of 52.6 million barrels, roughly 78 percent of the volume made available. By comparison, deliveries across all Nigerian refiners in the first quarter totaled 28.5 million barrels out of 68.7 million barrels offered.

Nigeria GDP accelerates as oil recovers

The higher refining activity coincided with steady gains in upstream extraction. Nigeria pumped an average of 1.72 million barrels per day in the second quarter, up from 1.55 million barrels per day in the first quarter and 1.68 million barrels per day a year earlier.

Overall, the oil sector expanded 7.31 percent year-on-year in the second quarter, recovering from 2.57 percent growth in the first three months of the year, while rising 10.91 percent on a quarter-on-quarter basis. Oil contributed 4.16 percent to total real GDP, up from 3.92 percent in the first quarter and 4.05 percent a year earlier.

Headline real GDP rose 4.43 percent year-on-year in the second quarter, compared with 4.23 percent in the corresponding period of 2025. The non-oil economy advanced 4.31 percent and continued to generate the bulk of activity, accounting for 95.84 percent of total real output.