Gasoline Subsidy To Cost Nigeria 10 Times More Than Budgeted

The rising cost of crude oil will increase the cost of Nigeria’s gasoline subsidy by nearly ten times what it had originally budgeted, Nigeria’s President Muhammadu Buhari said in a recent letter to lawmakers.

Nigeria’s Petroleum Motor Spirit subsidy is now set to cost 4 trillion naira this year, or $9.6 billion. This compares to Nigeria’s previous projections, which called for just 443 billion naira in gasoline subsidies.

Even though Nigeria is a major producer of crude oil, the high price of crude oil has come with drawbacks for Africa’s largest crude oil producer. Nigeria swaps at least a portion of its crude oil for gasoline—which it then sells at a loss.

Nigeria imports nearly all of the gasoline it consumes. And with today’s high prices, Nigeria is selling this gasoline at a very steep loss in order to keep gasoline prices at 162.5 naira per liter (39 cents). For perspective, in 2020, Nigeria’s petroleum imports exceeded its exports by $43 billion.

The letter, dated April 6 and seen by Bloomberg, called on lawmakers to increase the amount budgeted to continue subsidizing the price of gasoline.

Nigeria is in the midst of a fuel crisis that has seen vehicles lined up at gas stations to fuel up, in part due to its lack of refinery output, and in part due to some substandard gasoline it had imported earlier this year, which contained too much methanol.

Nigeria’s President signed a law last August that would end the costly gasoline subsidies by February 2022 but later reversed this notion, instead extending them for 18 more months to stave off fuel protests.

Nigeria has just four crude oil refineries with a combined nameplate capacity of 445,000 bpd—enough to meet domestic demand. But the state of disrepair of Nigeria’s refineries means it must still import 80% of all its refined products. A new 650,000 bpd refinery in Nigeria is expected to begin production in the fourth quarter of this year.

By Julianne Geiger for Oilprice.com

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