KEY POINTS
- Nigeria signed a Technical Equity Partnership with two Chinese firms for refinery rehabilitation.
- NNPC spent over $25 billion on refinery repairs between 2010 and 2023 without success.
- Dangote’s refinery turned Nigeria into a net petrol exporter by March 2026 despite crude supply gaps.
Nigeria has tried and failed to fix its refineries for over a decade. The tab is now estimated at more than $25 billion. The plants are still broken.
The Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited has signed a memorandum of understanding with two Chinese firms: Sanjiang Chemical Company Limited and Xinganchen Fuzhou Industrial Park Operation and Management Co. Ltd. The agreement covers the completion, operation and maintenance of the Port Harcourt refinery, which processes 210,000 barrels per day, and the Warri refinery at 125,000 barrels per day. The model is called a Technical Equity Partnership, meaning the Chinese partners share both technical expertise and financial risk rather than serving as simple contractors.
A partnership with questions attached
Industry analysts are not convinced. Neither Chinese firm has a clear track record in large-scale refinery rehabilitation. Sanjiang Chemical focuses on ethylene oxide, ethylene glycol and surfactants, not crude refining. Xinganchen Fuzhou is an industrial park manager, not an oil engineering firm. Both are private companies, not the major Chinese state-owned engineering groups that typically handle work of this complexity.
Labour and employer groups have added their voices. The Nigeria Employers’ Consultative Association and PENGASSAN have called for transparency and outright privatization, arguing that decades of government-led turnaround maintenance cycles have produced nothing but spending without results. The Port Harcourt refinery briefly restarted in late 2024 and was shut down again by May 2025.
Dangote has already moved past the argument
According to OilPrice, while NNPC and its Chinese partners negotiate rehabilitation timelines, the Dangote refinery in Lekki has already redrawn Nigeria’s energy position. Processing roughly 565,000 barrels per day, it produces around 57 million liters of petrol daily against national consumption of approximately 46 million liters. Nigeria became a net petrol exporter in March 2026. Daily petroleum imports fell from over 42 million liters in December 2025 to just 3 million liters by February 2026. By March, the refinery had shipped over 456,000 tonnes of products to Togo, Niger, Angola, Cameroon, Tanzania, Ghana, and Ivory Coast.
However, the Dangote refinery still struggles to source sufficient local crude, with Nigerian producers supplying only about 30% of its needs. International oil companies typically prefer exporting crude for higher margins. Domestic fuel prices have also climbed, rising nearly 50% as global oil prices surge on the back of the US-Israel-Iran conflict. Bonny Light crude, Nigeria’s premium grade, was trading at approximately $110 per barrel, more than 50% above the 2025 average.
Nigeria is collecting record oil revenues while its citizens pay more at the pump. The Chinese refinery deal may or may not change that.
