Nigeria emerges largest importer of US jet fuel

Nigeria, Africa’s biggest crude oil producer, continued to import a large volume of jet fuel as it had the highest volume draw from the United States in August, according to the latest data from the U.S Energy Information Administration.

The country imported 1.51 million barrels of US jet fuel in the month, surpassing Canada’s import of 1.23 million barrels.

Nigeria had in November 2013 imported 1.74 million barrels of the fuel, the country’s largest draw so far.

With 5.7 million barrels of the fuel imported from January to August, Nigeria remains the second-largest importer of US jet fuel after Canada. The country had imported 864,000 barrels of US jet fuel in February, rising from 292 barrels in January.

Also, the country imported a total of 809,000 barrels of kerosene from January to August. It brought in its largest kerosene cargo of 292,000 barrels in February.

Industry analysts and stakeholders have continued to stress the need to deregulate the downstream sector of the industry to attract private investment in order to ramp up the country’s refining capacity.

“Not very many persons will want to invest in the real downstream assets in this kind of environment. The environment is heavily regulated. It is not like deregulation will solve all our problems, but it is very critical. The regulatory environment will stifle any investment and so I don’t see anybody investing to build refineries until we address those fundamental issues,” the Chairman, Committee on Petroleum (Downstream), House of Representatives, Mr. Dakuku Peterside, said at a recent conference in Lagos.

Nigeria continues to create a lucrative market for refineries particularly in Europe and the US as it imports more than 80 per cent of its refined petroleum products as a result of inadequate domestic refining capacity.