The Crude Oil Refinery Owners Association of Nigeria has urged the Federal Government to urgently strengthen the domestic refining industry and reduce the country’s dependence on imported petroleum products.
The association made the call in a position paper titled, “Position Paper on the Urgent Need for Strategic Government Intervention to Strengthen Nigeria’s Domestic Refining Industry,” on Thursday while citing the recent intervention by United States President Donald Trump in the American refining sector as a lesson for Nigeria.
The association argued that Nigeria had an even stronger case for government intervention because local refinery operators faced foreign-exchange pressures, high borrowing costs, limited access to long-tenor financing, crude supply challenges, inadequate infrastructure, and high logistics costs.
“It is sound industrial policy. It is an energy-security policy. And ultimately, it is economic policy,” the association stated.
CORAN expressed concern that Nigeria, despite being one of Africa’s largest crude oil producers, continued to experience difficulties in supplying crude to domestic refineries on commercially workable terms.
The association said that during the first quarter of 2026, 61.9 million barrels were allocated to domestic refineries while producers offered 68.7 million barrels, but only 28.5 million barrels were actually delivered.
According to CORAN, the Nigerian Upstream Petroleum Regulatory Commission identified pricing gaps between producers and domestic refiners as one of the major reasons crude offered did not translate into completed transactions.
The association, however, acknowledged improvements in the second quarter, saying NUPRC reported that 53.7 million barrels of crude oil and condensate were supplied to local refineries, representing a reported Domestic Crude Supply Obligation performance of 97.4 percent.
“CORAN acknowledges and commends this improvement,” it stated.
The association, however, stressed that crude allocation alone was insufficient, noting that refineries required crude delivered under commercially sustainable conditions.
“A refinery does not consume an allocation on paper. It consumes crude delivered under commercially sustainable terms,” CORAN stated.
It called for greater consideration of pricing, transportation, evacuation infrastructure, crude quality, financing, payment arrangements, and proximity to producing assets when determining crude supply arrangements.
CORAN also called for a commercially sensible pricing template for crude supplied to domestic refineries.
It acknowledged that international benchmarks such as Brent, WTI, and Platts were useful market references but argued that they should not be applied mechanically where refiners were also required to bear separate evacuation and logistics costs.
