The Federal Government says Nigeria’s petrol import bill has crashed from about N2.3 trillion to under N90 billion within a year, following a sharp rise in domestic refining capacity.

Special Adviser to the President on Oil and Gas, Olu Verheijen, disclosed this at the Nigerian-British Chamber of Commerce Energy Day in Lagos, explaining that local petrol production has climbed from virtually zero in 2023 to about 48 million litres per day.

Verheijen said that, for the first time in a generation, most of the petrol consumed in Nigeria is now refined locally, easing pressure on foreign exchange and strengthening the naira.

She described every cargo of imported petrol as a “standing demand for scarce dollars” that had long weakened the currency. With local refineries now supplying the bulk of national demand, she noted, that structural drain has been significantly reduced.

According to her, petrol imports fell from about N2.3 trillion in the first quarter of 2025 to less than N90 billion a year later, underscoring the impact of reforms in the downstream sector.

Verheijen linked the gains in fuel supply to broader improvements in the oil and gas industry, saying crude oil and condensate production averaged 1.64 million barrels per day in 2025, up roughly 400,000 barrels per day from 2023 and representing the highest onshore output in two decades.

She added that more than four billion dollars’ worth of international oil company divestments had been concluded, deepening indigenous participation in onshore assets while multinational firms shifted focus to deep-water and integrated gas projects.

Pipeline uptime is now consistently high, she said, with illegal refining sharply reduced, boosting government revenue and jobs and reinforcing the federation’s fiscal position.

Verheijen recalled that the administration inherited a sector under severe strain, with fuel subsidies deemed fiscally unsustainable and foreign-exchange distortions choking investment. Power-sector debts were also crippling the gas-to-power value chain.

She said the government’s first task was to “stop the bleeding and rebuild the foundations” by removing fuel subsidies and reforming the exchange-rate regime, decisions she described as difficult but necessary.

Those measures, she noted, helped lift total federation revenue to about N21 trillion in 2024, from roughly N12 trillion in 2023, nearly doubling income in a single year while avoiding the nationwide petrol queues that once defined scarcity.