The Crude Oil Refinery-Owners Association of Nigeria (CORAN) has called on the Federal Government to progressively reduce petroleum product imports and limit them to verified domestic supply shortfalls and strategic stock requirements.
The association said the approach would support the growth of domestic refining while ensuring imports remain available when local production cannot meet demand.
CORAN President, Momoh Oyarekhua, made the proposal on Monday at the third Nigeria Oil Refining Summit in Lagos.
Oyarekhua said Nigeria’s refining capacity had made significant progress, but access to crude remained a major constraint for some domestic refineries.
He said some plants were still unable to secure crude on commercially viable terms despite the country’s substantial oil resources, while imported petroleum products continued to enter the market as local refining capacity remained underutilised.
According to him, increasing domestic refining would enable Nigeria to retain more foreign exchange, create jobs, build local technical expertise, support petrochemical and manufacturing industries and capture more value from its crude resources.
To address the crude supply challenge, Oyarekhua called for the full institutionalisation of the naira-for-crude arrangement, with transparent eligibility and access for qualifying domestic refineries, including modular plants.
He also proposed a domestic crude pricing framework that would account for crude quality, delivery location, international logistics costs avoided through local supply and the actual cost of domestic evacuation.
The CORAN president further urged stronger enforcement of the Domestic Crude Supply Obligation under Section 109 of the Petroleum Industry Act, while allowing commercially workable arrangements between producers and refiners.
He also advocated crude swaps and proximity-based supply arrangements that would enable crude-producing assets located near refineries to supply those facilities without unnecessary transportation through distant export terminals.
Oyarekhua called for a dedicated refinery development financing framework offering long-term funding, guarantees and refinancing options for new projects and capacity expansions.
He also proposed shared petroleum-product infrastructure, including pipelines, depots, storage terminals, jetties, rail evacuation systems and other common-carrier facilities to improve the movement of crude and refined products.
To strengthen supply security, he called for strategic petroleum-product reserves that could cushion the market against temporary refinery shutdowns, maintenance activities and disruptions to international supplies.
The association also wants regulatory and fiscal incentives for refinery expansion, particularly investments in conversion units capable of increasing domestic production of PMS, aviation fuel, LPG and other essential petroleum products.
Oyarekhua proposed the development of a clear national refining roadmap with targets covering refining capacity, domestic market share, petroleum product imports and eventual export capacity.
The push to reduce imports comes as rising domestic refining capacity creates a corresponding need for more crude feedstock.
Chairman of the Independent Petroleum Producers Group (IPPG), Adegbite Falade, said domestic refineries could require more than 1.5 million barrels per day of crude in the medium term, depending on refinery rehabilitation, expansion, operating rates and the commissioning of additional modular plants.
Falade said that potential requirement would be close to Nigeria’s current liquids production of about 1.68 million barrels per day, based on the Nigerian Upstream Petroleum Regulatory Commission’s August 2026 production report.
He said the recovery in national production was encouraging compared with previous years but remained insufficient to comfortably meet rising refinery demand.
If domestic refinery demand approaches 1.5 million bpd while national production remains around 1.6 million bpd, Falade warned that the available supply margin would become extremely narrow.
That margin would still have to accommodate crude export commitments, government revenue requirements, crude-backed financing arrangements and joint-venture partner offtake.
He also identified planned and unplanned production outages, Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) commitments, crude-grade mismatches, terminal and pipeline disruptions and normal operational requirements as additional constraints on available crude supply.
The competing demands highlight the need to expand upstream production alongside the development of domestic refining capacity. Industry stakeholders have similarly warned that Nigeria cannot sustain a rapidly expanding refining base by simply reallocating existing crude production among domestic refiners and export commitments.
For CORAN, restricting imports to objectively established supply gaps would allow domestic refineries to gain a larger role in meeting local demand while preserving imports as a buffer where local production is insufficient.
The association’s proposals therefore combine import reduction with measures aimed at improving crude access, refinery financing, logistics, infrastructure and long-term production capacity.