Fuel marketers are currently battling to secure new licences to import about 950 million litres of Premium Motor Spirit (PMS) valued at N862.6 billion monthly.

The new moves is to fill the shortfall in domestic consumption. Nigeria’s domestic consumption is 63.7 million litres daily, translating to 1.911 billions litres monthly.

Findings from the Nigerian Midstream and Downstream Petroleum Regulatory Authority (NMDPRA) indicates that only 32.01 million litres per day or (960.3 million litres) were supplied by local refiners in one month.

According to the authority, in December 2025, Dangote Petroleum Refinery’s average capacity utilisation was 62.94 per cent, planned domestic supply 50 million litres/day but actual average domestic supply was 32.012 million litres/day.

To mitigate the shortfall, marketers are press ing for import licence from NMDPRA for shipment of fuel to close the supply gap and Nigeria’s total domestic petroleum needs. They allege that maintenance downtime and logistics bottlenecks by Dangote could translate into shortages. Before the new move, imports had earlier been restricted to volumes required to cover shortfalls in domestic refinery output.

This week, import data from Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA)’s Shipping Position revealed that two vessels arrived Delta Port with a landing price of N1,120 per litre to offload 39.908 tonnes from Marvel with 19,908 tonnes and Savanna, 20,000 tonnes. Dangote Petroleum Refinery had earlier disclaimed that it imported finished petrol, diesel and jet fuel, saying that it imported only unfinished feed stocks that are processed locally into refined products.

According to the company, materials such as cracked gasoline, light cycle oil, and high-sulphur reformate require extensive local processing and cannot be used directly in vehicles. Industry stakeholders say importation has become necessary because Dangote Refinery is still in an expansion phase and cannot meet national demand consistently.

Recall that NMDPRA had said in 2025 that there had been a steady improvement in daily domestic production as capacity increase in January with 22.66 million litres; February, 22.42 million litres; March, 20 million litres; April, 20.35 million litres; May, 17.85 million litres; June, 17.82 million litres; July, 16.50 million litres and August, 21.19 million litres.