Nigeria Emerges Among African Oil-producing Nations with Costly Petrol after Subsidy Removal

Emmanuel Addeh in Abuja

Nigeria has emerged among the top oil-producing nations in Africa with the most expensive petrol prices, after the Bola Tinubu-led government fully deregulated the downstream oil and gas sector and removed the country’s decades-long subsidy on the petroleum product.
Nigeria spent as much as N4.39 trillion or $9.7 billion going by the exchange rate at the time on petrol subsidy in 2022, data showed, a cost the government blamed for its dwindling public finances and inability to finance major impactful projects.

In 2023, despite the president’s pronouncement of subsidy removal on May 29 of that year on the day of his swearing in, the Nigerian government spent N3.6 trillion, after the underpayments gradually creeped back into the government’s spending, until recently when the downstream was freed from government control.
But new data released by GlobalPetrolPrices.com, at the weekend showed that after the total stoppage of the underpayments, Nigeria, Africa’s biggest oil producer now has one of the highest petrol prices on the continent among key oil producers.

GlobalPetrolPrices.com publishes wide-ranging and up-to-date information on retail energy prices around the world, including motor fuel prices, electricity prices, and natural gas prices.
For fuel prices, it tracks the national average prices in 150 countries and over 250 cities globally. The series are updated weekly. It’s data base, it says, consists of over 100,000 data points spanning more than 10 years.

But the new information showed that among the top oil-producing countries in Africa, Gabon’s price came highest with $0.952 while Nigeria sold for $0.768 as of December 2024. However, the recorded Nigerian petrol price was before the recent minor adjustments by the Dangote refinery and the NNPC’s Port Harcourt refinery.
Libya has the cheapest petrol price per litre of $0.031 on the continent and 2nd globally, according to the data; followed by Angola at $0.329; Egypt’s was $0.335 per litre; Algeria was selling for $0.343 per litre while Sudan’s was $0.700; followed by Ethiopia $0.718 per litre of petrol.

The average price of petrol around the world during the period was $1.24  per litre, but with substantial difference in the prices among countries due to different taxes and levies, the report said.
“As a general rule, richer countries have higher prices while poorer countries and the countries that produce and export oil have significantly lower prices. One notable exception is the US which is an economically advanced country but has low gas prices.
“The differences in prices across countries are due to the various taxes and subsidies for gasoline (petrol). All countries have access to the same petroleum prices of international markets but then decide to impose different taxes, hence the retail price of gasoline is different,” it added.
Globally, the report showed that Iran has the cheapest petrol price at $0.029, closely followed by other oil-producing countries like Libya, Venezuela, Angola, Egypt, Kuwait, Algeria, Turkmenistan, among others.
On the other hand, countries with the most expensive petrol prices per litre worldwide are: Hong Kong ($3.311); Monaco ($2.240); Iceland ($2.197); Denmark ($2.052); Israel ($2.052) and Netherlands ($2.050).
Many Nigerians have urged the government to be more transparent in its spending of the savings from the petrol subsidy removal by giving a monthly account of the monies saved and the projects they are tied to.