Dangote Refinery is sharpening the price war already underway in Nigeria’s downstream petroleum market, reducing its gantry rate for diesel by N100 a litre and signaling that cheaper crude abroad is starting to show up at the pump at home.
The refinery now sells Automotive Gas Oil, the diesel that powers trucks, generators and factory floors across the country, at N1,600 a litre, down from N1,700. Aviation Turbine Kerosene, the jet fuel airlines depend on, fell by the same N100 increment, to N1,450 a litre from N1,550.
The reductions, drawn from market data obtained by Petroleumprice.ng, put Dangote’s diesel roughly N60 a litre below what private depots in Lagos were charging just a day earlier. African Terminal, Sahara, Ibeto and Duport were all closing diesel sales at N1,660 a litre on June 16. Rainoil had already nudged its jet fuel price down to N1,550 a litre from N1,553 on June 15, a smaller adjustment that now looks modest next to Dangote’s move.
Depot operators compete on thin margins, and a refinery undercutting them by N60 a litre on diesel is the kind of spread that tends to force matching cuts rather than invite a standoff. Traders and marketers holding inventory bought at higher landing costs now face pressure to discount or risk losing volume to a refinery that can effectively set its own price floor.
