Dangote Petroleum Refinery has raised the price of petrol sold to its customers to N1,350 per litre, up from N1,265, with the new rate taking effect on Saturday, September 12, 2026.
The increase was communicated in a circular issued late on Friday by the refinery’s Group Commercial Operations department, which also revised the coastal delivery price from N1,669,545 to N1,783,530 per metric tonne. Customers were asked to submit existing Authority to Collect documents for repricing, after which new volume contracts would be issued to allow loading to resume.
What gives the latest move weight is not the N85 itself but the pattern it completes. This is the fourth upward revision of the refinery’s petrol gantry price since August 21, when the rate moved from N1,165 to N1,185. It was raised again to N1,200 on August 26, then to N1,265 on August 29. Taken together, the four adjustments have added N185 per litre in 22 days, an increase of about 15.9 per cent.
Set against the start of the year, the shift is sharper still. In early February, the refinery cut its gantry price from N799 to N774 per litre, a period when analysts read the reduction as a sign of easing cost pressures, improving refinery efficiency and competition from imported cargoes. Measured from that N774 benchmark, the gantry price has risen roughly 74 per cent in seven months.
The reversal tracks a global market that has moved against import dependent economies. Brent crude closed at $101.21 per barrel on September 9, a single session gain of 3.4 per cent, after United States Central Command confirmed the destruction of five Iranian oil tankers, while Houthi forces struck Saudi oil facilities. By that date Brent was up roughly 65 per cent year to date. Quoted price levels around the time of the Dangote circular vary by source and trading session. Brent was reported at about $105 per barrel on Thursday, while figures put it near $107.86 on Friday after an earlier move above $108. Any single quoted figure should therefore be read as a snapshot rather than a settled price.
The transmission channel from that volatility to Nigerian pumps runs through replacement cost, and here the numbers are unusually clear. Data from the Major Energies Marketers Association of Nigeria put the estimated landing cost of petrol at N1,311.36 per litre as of September 8, against a 30 day average of N1,216.34, a gap of N95.02. Earlier bulletins from the same association had already flagged the direction of travel. MEMAN figures put the petrol landing cost at N1,314.67 per litre, with diesel at N1,850.66, at a point when Dangote was still pricing petrol at N1,265.50 and Lagos depots including Integrated, Ascon and Sahara were selling at N1,280.
That comparison is the analytical heart of the story. For much of the recent run, domestic prices sat below import parity, meaning traders were selling at rates that would not cover the cost of bringing in a fresh cargo. MEMAN’s August 27 bulletin, for instance, showed the Dangote gantry price at N1,200 while estimated spot import parity stood at N1,222.32, placing the refinery N22.32 below the benchmark. The new N1,350 rate closes and then crosses that gap. The revised gantry price now sits above the petrol landing cost of N1,311.36 per litre cited by Petroleumprice.ng, a reading also reflected in comparative analysis drawing on MEMAN’s published benchmark of about N1,311 per litre. Whether that reflects a genuine cost pass through or a repositioning ahead of further crude gains is a matter of interpretation rather than established fact, and the refinery has not publicly explained the margin. Officials had not responded to enquiries seeking further details at the time the price took effect.
For motorists, the gantry figure is a floor, not a final price. After the August 29 adjustment, petrol was selling at about N1,310 per litre in Lagos and Ogun, while prices in northern states and locations farther from the coastal refinery climbed to N1,350 or more, approaching N1,400 in some markets. Transport and distribution costs account for much of that spread. Depot prices in Calabar had reached as high as N1,290 per litre during the same period, and Matrix Warri moved to N1,300, Optima to N1,305 and Calabar depot to N1,310, increases of between N25 and N35 per litre. Diesel has moved in parallel, with Lagos automotive gas oil prices reaching as high as N1,830 per litre in early September after two Dangote adjustments in one week.
Marketers have pointed to the difficulty of operating under this volatility. Chinedu Ukadike, spokesperson for the Independent Petroleum Marketers Association of Nigeria, said members were contending with several moving variables, including international crude prices. Repricing of stock held at old rates, the practice the Friday circular formalised through the recall of collection documents, is one of the more immediate operational pressures.
The wider question is duration. JPMorgan has estimated that a three to four week squeeze on traffic through the Strait of Hormuz could force production shut ins and sustain Brent above $100, with one analyst cautioning that a prolonged closure could prove more severe than the oil shock of the 1970s. The strait normally carries about 20 million barrels of oil and petroleum products a day. The chokepoint has already shown how quickly conditions can swing in both directions. In late June, oil prices fell as tankers exited the strait, easing supply fears even after a vessel was attacked in the Gulf of Oman.
For Nigeria, a crude exporter that still prices refined products against international benchmarks, the exposure cuts both ways. Higher Brent lifts export earnings while simultaneously raising the replacement cost of petrol sold at home. The N1,350 gantry price is the current point of settlement between those two pressures, and on the evidence of the past three weeks, it may not hold for long.