Aradel Holdings Plc plans to begin producing petrol at its Ogbele modular refinery in 2027, following Nigeria's removal of fuel subsidies, which has made local petrol production more commercially viable.
Temitayo Ogunbanjo, General Manager for Refineries at Aradel, disclosed this at the 2026 West Africa Refined Fuel Market (WAFRFM) Conference in Abuja, organised by the West Africa Regulators Forum, the Nigerian Midstream and Downstream Petroleum Regulatory Authority and S&P Global Energy.
The 11,000-barrel-a-day facility in Rivers State currently produces kerosene, diesel, gas oil and naphtha. Nigerian refiners had for years avoided petrol production, as a government-fixed pump price, sustained by a subsidy that cost the federal treasury more than $10 billion annually at its peak, left them unable to compete with landed imports sold below cost.
President Bola Tinubu ended the subsidy in his first address after taking office in 2023, a decision that pushed pump prices and inflation higher but opened the downstream market to local refiners, including the Dangote Petroleum Refinery's 650,000-barrel-a-day complex outside Lagos.
Ogunbanjo said Aradel is also considering an expansion of the Ogbele facility, alongside potential crude supply arrangements and export logistics. He did not disclose an investment figure, saying details would be firmed up as engineering studies progress over the next year.
The company is separately weighing investment in aviation fuel production, which it views as an export opportunity to Europe amid a rebound in international air travel.
The WAFRFM conference, themed "Funding West Africa Infrastructure & Distribution to Create a Transparent Market for Regional Price Benchmarks," also heard from Minister of State for Petroleum Resources Heineken Lokpobiri, who said Nigeria's expanding refining capacity had still not closed the gap between local output and market demand, even with Dangote's refinery running.