Nigeria imported approximately 61.7 million barrels of crude oil from the United States between January 2024 and January 2026, even as it exported over 355 million barrels to international markets within a similar period, data from the US Energy Information Administration and the Central Bank of Nigeria show.
The figures expose a deepening paradox in Africa’s largest oil producer: a country that exports the bulk of its crude output is simultaneously sourcing foreign feedstock to sustain domestic refining operations.
Before 2024, American crude shipments to Nigeria were virtually non-existent. The last recorded supply was in March 2016, when exports averaged just 19,000 barrels per day — totalling about 589,000 barrels for the month.
The trade relationship remained dormant until 2024, coinciding with the commencement of operations at the Dangote refinery, which industry observers have identified as the primary buyer of US crude.
EIA data, reported in thousands of barrels per day, showed that Nigeria took in 15.701 million barrels from the US in the first six months of 2024 alone.
Monthly volumes ranged from a low of 1.08 million barrels in May to a high of 3.96 million barrels in June, when daily imports peaked at 132,000 barrels.
Imports accelerated sharply in 2025. Between February and December, Nigeria received 41.06 million barrels of US crude — the largest share of the two-year total.
The monthly rate peaked in June 2025 at 305,000 barrels per day, delivering about 9.15 million barrels within 30 days, the highest single-month figure in the dataset.
August recorded another strong inflow of 201,000 barrels per day, equivalent to 6.23 million barrels.
Supply tapered off toward the year’s end, falling to 12,000 barrels per day in November — just 360,000 barrels — before a marginal recovery to 23,000 barrels per day in December. In January 2026, imports climbed back to 159,000 barrels per day, amounting to 4.93 million barrels.
Despite the inflows, Nigeria continued exporting crude in large volumes. CBN data showed the country shipped out 306.7 million barrels between January and October 2025 — about 69 per cent of its total production of 443.5 million barrels during the period, averaging 1.45 million barrels per day. In the first two months of 2026, exports reached 55.39 million barrels — 31.31 million in January and 24.08 million in February — leaving just 26.55 million barrels for domestic refineries.
The Dangote refinery, one of the world’s largest single-train refineries, requires over 19 million barrels of feedstock monthly to operate at optimal capacity. Aliko Dangote has attributed the US crude imports to the need to bridge the gap between the refinery’s requirements and what is available domestically.
Sources told our correspondent that the facility also imports crude from Ghana and other African countries.
The naira-for-crude arrangement, designed to ease domestic supply constraints, has not fully resolved the problem.
On several occasions, the Dangote refinery has complained of insufficient crude allocation, forcing continued reliance on foreign sources. The Crude Oil Refiners Association of Nigeria similarly warned that some modular refineries under its umbrella have intermittently shut down due to inadequate feedstock supply.
For decades, Nigeria depended on imports of refined products — petrol and diesel — due to limited local refining capacity. The Dangote refinery’s commissioning was expected to reverse that trend. Instead, the country has merely shifted from importing finished fuels to importing the raw crude needed to produce them.
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