An official of S&P Global Energy, Matthew Tracey-Cook on Thursday, 19 June, 2026 disclosed that Nigerian fuel marketers are increasingly importing refined petroleum products originating from the Dangote Petroleum Refinery through the offshore ship-to-ship trading hub in Lome, Togo.
Tracey-Cook , who made this disclosure on Thursday, 19 June, 2026 while speaking at a MEMAN webinar themed “West Africa pricing and flows in the context of the war,” said the circular trade pattern persists even as the refinery boosts local production and supply, highlighting a possible disparity between local and international pricing.
While providing aninsights into evolving West African refined products markets, emphasising the deepening interconnection between Dangote’s coastal operations and the Lome STS hub, Tracey-Cook said Dangote volumes on a coastal basis do arrive back in Lagos from Lomé. Tracey-Cook presented data showing a marked shift in supply sources for Nigeria.
While waterborne imports exclude truck volumes, Dangote-origin products have become dominant in waterborne deliveries to Lagos and other Nigerian locations.
“Over the last six months, if you look at the volume of products on a waterborne basis that’s imported directly into Nigeria, Dangote production has become increasingly dominant,” he said.
He noted particularly strong performance between March and May 2026, saying, “For several months, from March until May, we saw well over 70 to 80 per cent of the volumes that were imported into Nigeria actually originated from Dangote; from their coastal Dangote volumes which were re-imported.”
According to him, similar patterns appear on the diesel side, noting that “the increasing importance of the Dangote refinery in terms of product that’s flowing into Nigeria is really evident” from S&P Global data.
He added that despite Dangote’s growing direct coastal supply, offshore Lome has not diminished in importance, as the Lomé market is still slightly bigger compared to 2024 levels.
In certain months, such as November and December 2025, Lome handled significantly larger volumes. The hub serves as a flexible STS facility where larger medium-range tankers discharge cargoes that are then lifted onto smaller coaster vessels better suited to many West African ports with limited capacity.
“Lomé has become an increasingly important transshipment hub for filling regional shortages across the region… It serves an important purpose, given that many ports in West Africa don’t have the capacity to take a fully laden MR-sized vessel,” he added.
Charts from the webinar illustrate substantial Dangote exports to offshore Lome. These volumes include petrol, diesel, jet fuel and other clean products. Offshore Lome receives diverse origins but consistently incorporates significant Dangote cargoes.
Tracey-Cook also addressed pricing trends, noting an unusual seasonal pattern since the Middle East crisis began, adding, “This is really an unusual seasonal trend where gasoline in West Africa is significantly more expensive than it is in Europe right now.”
He added that Dangote petrol pricing remains tightly aligned with STS Lome benchmarks, while price differentials between the two locations enable effective risk management.
Tracey-Cook positioned Dangote and Lome as twin pillars of West African supply. “These two locations, the FOB Dangote market and also the STS Lomé market, are the two largest and most important regional hubs of supply in the region as a whole.
“You can, in a way, kind of compare it to the Mediterranean market, where you have multiple refineries, multiple sources of supply… And so that’s kind of what we see as a possibility in terms of development of this market,” he stressed.
It was disclosed that the US-Iran war’s impact has amplified Dangote’s role. “Looking at the context of the war, one of the most important things that stands out is the importance of Dangote in supplying not just West Africa, in terms of being a supplier of last resort across clean products, but also the European market.
“Europe before the war was more than 50 per cent reliant on jet fuel from inside the Persian Gulf. And when that supply was cut off, benchmark prices spiked to well over $1,800 per metric tonne.
“What we saw in the months after the war broke out was an increasing flow of product from the US, but also a large flow of product from Dangote. We actually saw in May Dangote being the largest single exporter of jet fuel globally in terms of refined product capacity,” Tracey-Cook noted, just as he also showed record Dangote exports outside West Africa from April to June 2026, with notable deliveries to the UK, the Netherlands and South Africa, among others.
Source: The Punch online
