A G7 Release. Court Ruling Keeps Import Licences Alive for Three Major Marketers. Rhofurd as Your Reliable Energy Partner.

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This has been a weekend where diplomacy and conflict arrived almost side by side. The G7 agreed to release 100 million barrels of oil and diesel to calm prices, OPEC+ confirmed it is holding output steady for a second straight month, and yet Houthi fighters still managed to send a fireball into the sky over Riyadh on Saturday. At home, Nigeria had just as much happening, a gas minister disclosing that domestic supply has finally crossed 2 billion cubic feet a day, a three decade old LNG project in Ogun State suddenly coming back to life, a court ruling that reshapes who gets to import petrol, and Dangote using two different stages this week to make the same point about building things at home rather than importing them. Let's walk through everything from Friday through today in detail, then bring it back, as always, to what it means for Nigeria's gas market and for the businesses that depend on a steady, reliable energy supply.

Let's get into it.

OIL PRICES: A G7 RELEASE, A RIYADH FIREBALL, AND OPEC+ STAYING THE COURSE

Friday, October 2 was dominated by one announcement.

After a video conference of G7 leaders chaired by French President Emmanuel Macron, the group said it would implement its commitments through a coordinated release via the International Energy Agency of 100 million barrels of oil and fuel products, with the release beginning immediately and running over roughly four months, front loaded with a substantial diesel component lasting about 20 days. The move followed direct pressure from President Trump and came after diesel prices in parts of the world had climbed past $6 a gallon. Macron told reporters the group's unity should bring down prices, particularly for diesel, and European gasoil futures fell more than 4% on the news while diesel's premium over crude narrowed from roughly $76.77 a barrel on Thursday to about $69. Brent briefly dropped below $100 a barrel immediately after the announcement before recovering to around $102 by the evening.

There was genuine ambiguity about exactly what was being announced. Pavel Molchanov, an investment strategy analyst at Raymond James, pointed out that it was not entirely clear whether the 100 million barrels represented a fresh commitment on top of the 426 million barrels IEA members had already pledged back in March, or whether it was simply the remaining, unreleased portion of that original pledge. IEA Executive Director Fatih Birol had said earlier in the week that member countries had already released about two thirds of that original commitment, which suggests the new announcement leans toward completing rather than expanding the existing pledge. Jim Krane, an energy research fellow at Rice University, struck a more cautious note, warning that with two wars raging and both involving attacks on refineries and export infrastructure, it is not the best time to be drawing down emergency stocks, especially when there is no visibility on future prices or any peace agreement. The G7 also said export bans remain off the table as part of the response.

The market's relief did not last through the weekend. A large plume of smoke and fire was spotted rising from the vicinity of an Aramco facility south of Riyadh on Saturday, October 3, according to a witness cited by Reuters. There was no immediate confirmation from Saudi authorities about the fire, but the Houthis claimed the attack later that day, with military spokesman Yahya Saree saying the group had carried out what he called a military operation with ballistic missiles and drones targeting the Aramco facility.

Turki al Maliki, spokesman for the Saudi led coalition supporting Yemen's internationally recognised government, dismissed the Houthi claim of having targeted Riyadh as misleading, while a separate Yemeni government military spokesman said the coalition's own strikes that day had targeted at least 260 Houthi fighters and destroyed or disabled 44 military vehicles. This attack came only a few weeks after the Houthis had said they struck Aramco facilities at Yanbu, a claim Saudi Arabia responded to at the time by saying it had intercepted six ballistic missiles fired toward Taif and the Yanbu area and reported no damage to Aramco sites, and it followed an earlier, confirmed round of attacks in September that wounded 73 people and briefly halted operations at energy facilities in Abha, Khamis Mushait, Jazan and Najran, including the 400,000 barrel a day Jazan refinery.

Against that backdrop, OPEC+ held its scheduled meeting on Sunday, October 4. Three sources close to the discussions told Reuters ahead of the meeting that the group had agreed in principle to keep oil production targets steady for November, and that expectation was confirmed when the seven core members of the wider alliance, Saudi Arabia, Russia, Iraq, Kuwait, Algeria, Kazakhstan and Oman, held a brief online meeting and issued a statement saying they would maintain the production required for September 2026 through November 2026. It marks the second consecutive month the group has paused what had otherwise been a steady series of increases through much of 2026 as it gradually unwound earlier production cuts. A separate OPEC+ ministerial body, the Joint Ministerial Monitoring Committee, which does not set policy but reviews market conditions, also met the same day, and the group confirmed its next full meeting for November 1.

UBS analyst Giovanni Staunovo summed up the underlying tension well, noting that the group kept its production ceilings unchanged in line with market expectations, but that despite rising flows through the Strait of Hormuz, actual output levels at Gulf producers remain well below quota. Reuters reported that Gulf OPEC+ exports have been fluctuating at 60% to 80% of normal levels in recent months because of the ongoing war, and that the group's planned review of members' production capacity, which is needed before it can set 2027 quotas, has been delayed and pushed back toward mid November because the war has made it so hard to estimate what countries can actually produce. OPEC's own data showed the seven core members pumped 25 million barrels a day in August, still about 5 million barrels a day below pre war levels, and a further layer of roughly 2 million barrels a day of voluntary cuts remains in place across most members through the end of 2026, meaning any meaningful change in headline OPEC+ output is unlikely before next year at the earliest.

By this morning, Monday, October 5, the combination of the G7 release and continued recovery in Middle East exports was outweighing the weekend's attack, at least for now. Brent fell 0.8% to around $101 a barrel, according to reporting carried by HDFC Sky and sourced to Oilprice.com, with the report explicitly noting that oil prices fell even as fresh attacks on Saudi energy infrastructure added to the underlying geopolitical risk. Brent remains above the $100 a barrel mark, a level the Wall Street Journal highlighted as still reflecting a substantial geopolitical premium embedded in prices even as the headline supply numbers improve.

NIGERIA: DOMESTIC GAS SUPPLY CROSSES 2 BILLION CUBIC FEET A DAY

Nigeria's own gas numbers took a genuine step forward this week. Speaking in Abuja on Friday, October 2, Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, Gas, Ekperikpe Ekpo, told reporters that Nigeria's domestic gas supply has crossed 2 billion cubic feet a day for the first time, while total national gas production has climbed to about 7.5 billion cubic feet a day, up from roughly 6.8 billion cubic feet a day back in 2023. Nigeria's proven gas reserves have also grown over that period, from 208.83 trillion cubic feet to 215.19 trillion cubic feet as of January 1, 2026, reinforcing the country's position as one of the continent's largest gas resource holders. The government is targeting 10 billion cubic feet a day of production by 2027 and 12 billion cubic feet a day by 2030, and BusinessDay's reporting on the same briefing pointed out a sobering detail buried in those numbers, that of the 7.5 billion cubic feet produced daily, a little over 2 billion is actually reaching the domestic market, meaning the majority of Nigeria's gas is still either exported, consumed in upstream operations, or lost.

Ekpo credited infrastructure progress for the domestic supply milestone, pointing in particular to the Obiafu Obrikom Oben pipeline, known as OB3, which has now reached full completion and is being prepared for first gas. The pipeline can carry up to 2 billion cubic feet a day on its own and is expected to unlock more than 500 million standard cubic feet a day of additional gas specifically for the domestic market once it is fully operational, a figure Leadership separately corroborated. The Ajaokuta Kaduna Kano pipeline, the other major backbone project we have tracked across several editions, is now about 95% complete according to Ekpo, a modest advance from the 80% figure cited in earlier reporting this quarter. He also restated the Midstream and Downstream Gas Infrastructure Fund numbers we covered in our previous edition, that N671 billion, equivalent to about $434 million, in public capital deployed through the fund has attracted roughly N1.6 trillion in private investment across 31 projects and 205 infrastructure assets, which are expected to deliver about 475 million standard cubic feet a day to the domestic market once fully operational. Nigeria's overall target remains about $30 billion in gas sector investment by 2030.

A follow up media engagement over the weekend, reported by THISDAY on Monday, October 5, filled in further detail on where that investment is actually going. Ekpo disclosed that four major gas projects have now reached Final Investment Decision under the current administration, together representing approximately $3.5 billion in committed investment, the Iseni Project at about $122 million, the Ubeta Project at about $566 million, the HI Project at $2 billion, and the Ima Project at $800 million, the last of which we covered in detail in a previous edition as the feedgas source for roughly one third of NLNG's Train 7 expansion.

Ekpo added that a separate, similarly sized Brass Methanol Project, also valued at around $3.5 billion, has advanced closer toward its own execution following the resolution of its Gas Sales and Purchase Agreement. Leadership reported that taken together, the four completed FIDs plus the Brass Methanol project under negotiation would represent roughly $7 billion in committed and near committed investment, and that the government has identified about 20 gas projects in total that it is now pushing toward FID as part of its path to the 10 billion cubic feet a day target. On the power side, Ekpo said the National Economic Council has approved approximately N185 billion to settle validated legacy debts owed to upstream gas producers, some of which had gone unpaid for as long as 10 years, a step intended to restore commercial discipline and rebuild supplier confidence in gas to power contracts. On gas flaring, he said 42 companies have now been awarded contracts to convert flare gas that would otherwise be wasted into energy, feedstock, LPG, CNG and power, part of a broader commitment to end routine gas flaring by 2030.

NIGERIA: A THIRTY YEAR OLD LNG PROJECT COMES BACK TO LIFE IN OGUN STATE

In one of the more unexpected developments of the week, NNPC and the Ogun State government moved to revive the long dormant Olokola Liquefied Natural Gas project, known as OKLNG, in Ogun Waterside. Receiving an NNPC delegation in Abeokuta, Governor Dapo Abiodun said the renewed interest came just days after Ogun signed Memoranda of Understanding with global ports operator DP World for the development of the Gateway Deep Sea Port and a 10,000 hectare Blue Marine Special Economic Zone, agreements signed in Paris in the presence of President Bola Tinubu that are expected to attract more than $7 billion in initial investment and create over 50,000 direct jobs.

Last Wednesday, we signed an MoU on the Deep Sea Port, and today we have the NNPC team here discussing the activation of the LNG plant, Abiodun said, describing a project that had been on the drawing board for more than three decades. NNPC Group Chief Financial Officer Adedapo Segun said the company is undertaking a comprehensive review of the challenges that stalled the project in the past, with the goal of finding lasting solutions and bringing it back to life, while NNPC's Executive Vice President for Gas, Power and New Energy, Lekan Ogunleye, disclosed that the plant would require approximately 1,728 hectares for the LNG facilities, utilities and storage, along with about 2.5 kilometres of dedicated Atlantic frontage to support marine traffic and safety requirements for up to three LNG jetties.

Abiodun pointed to NNPC's existing Bonny Island facility, where he said around 14,000 people are employed, as a sign of the scale of employment a revived Olokola project could eventually support, and said the Ogun government would provide land within the economic zone and the cooperation and guarantees needed to help the project take off. The Federal Government, through the Presidency, has framed the Gateway Deep Sea Port, the Blue Marine Special Economic Zone and the revived LNG project as parts of a single integrated corridor connecting maritime access, industrial production, energy supply and logistics along Nigeria's southwestern coastline, alongside the Ogun section of the Lagos Calabar Coastal Highway that is also planned to run through the area.

NIGERIA: COURT RULING KEEPS IMPORT LICENCES ALIVE FOR THREE MAJOR MARKETERS

A ruling that has significant implications for the ongoing standoff between Dangote Refinery and independent fuel importers landed just before this edition's window opened, and its effects were still being analysed this week. On September 28, the Federal High Court in Abuja ordered the Nigerian Midstream and Downstream Petroleum Regulatory Authority to continue issuing import licences to three distributors, Matrix Energy, A.A. Rano and AYM Shafa, the same three companies Dangote had restricted supply to over concerns about blending and product quality. The companies had gone to court in June arguing that they have invested more than $20 billion collectively in infrastructure, logistics and distribution networks across Nigeria, and the court found that NMDPRA's refusal to issue their licences and related permits violated provisions of the Petroleum Industry Act.

An EcofinAgency analysis republished by Oriental News Nigeria on Friday, October 2 set the ruling in its fuller context. NMDPRA had gradually restricted new petrol import licences over the course of the year as domestic refining capacity grew, issuing no new gasoline import licences at all in February 2026 after concluding that improved domestic supply allowed it to suspend new permits under the Petroleum Industry Act's framework, which only provides for imports when local production cannot meet demand. That suspension did not mean the restriction removed imports from the market entirely, since it applied only to new authorisations rather than existing supply. During the suspension, average petrol consumption stood at 56.9 million litres a day in February, down from 60.2 million litres in January, while Dangote supplied 36.5 million litres a day to the domestic market, about 64% of average consumption, alongside roughly 8 million litres a day of diesel, and imports still contributed about 3 million litres a day even without new licences being issued.

The regulator reversed course in late March, resuming licence issuance after supply shortages emerged amid the broader disruption caused by the Middle East crisis, with six distributors receiving fresh authorisation to import additional petrol. That sequence shows the real pattern at play, that growing domestic refining has reduced Nigeria's need for imports without eliminating their role as a supply buffer the regulator can open or close depending on conditions. The dispute escalated further in May, when Dangote went to court seeking to cancel import licences the regulator had granted or renewed for NNPC and several distributors, arguing that imports should be permitted only when domestic production genuinely falls short and that the authorisations threaten its commercial operations, while the distributors argue that overly strict import restrictions risk reducing competition and exposing the market to supply shocks if anything goes wrong at the refinery. The September 28 ruling, in other words, does not resolve that underlying dispute so much as confirm, for now, that the three named marketers retain the legal right to import, even as Dangote's own restriction on supplying them with locally refined product continues separately.

NIGERIA: DANGOTE MAKES THE CASE FOR DOMESTIC PRODUCTION, TWICE IN ONE WEEK

Dangote Group used two separate platforms this week to press the same underlying argument about building productive capacity inside Nigeria rather than relying on imports. At the group's special day at the 21st Abuja International Trade Fair on Friday, October 2, Regional Director Hajia Fatima Wali Abdurrahman, represented by Group General Manager Abdullahi Dan Musa, called on Nigeria to strengthen domestic production, reduce import dependence and expand exports in order to build economic resilience and competitiveness, telling the audience that economic resilience goes beyond simply withstanding difficulties to include adapting, innovating and continuing to invest in the future.

She said Dangote Group remains committed to building productive capacity across Nigeria and Africa through investments that create jobs and strengthen local supply chains, and cited Dangote Cement's own history as an example, crediting it with helping transform Nigeria from a major cement importing market into a significant producer and exporter in its own right. On the petroleum side specifically, she disclosed that Dangote Petroleum Refinery currently operates at a refining capacity of 700,000 barrels a day, with an expansion to 1.4 million barrels a day already planned, and argued that the facility would help develop local technical expertise and strengthen Nigeria's wider industrial capacity over time.

The same message continued into the weekend. Speaking at the Dangote Special Day at the ongoing Abuja International Trade Fair, under this year's theme of Resilience, Trade, Taxation and the Economy, Group General Manager Abdullahi Bello Danmusa, again representing Wali Abdurrahman, stressed that taxation remains a fundamental component of national development and that Dangote Group takes its tax obligations seriously, contributing substantial revenue to government annually while supporting employment, enterprise and value creation across its operations. He argued that trade becomes more meaningful when it is supported by production, and that no country can build lasting resilience by depending excessively on imports that it has the capacity to produce competitively at home, a line that applies just as directly to petroleum products as it does to the cement, fertiliser, agriculture and petrochemicals businesses he cited as evidence of what domestic productive capacity can achieve.

GLOBAL LPG: ARAMCO AND SONATRACH'S OCTOBER INCREASES CONTINUE TO FEED THROUGH

We flagged this pricing move in detail in our previous edition, but it remains directly relevant to this week's Nigerian cooking gas story, so it is worth restating briefly. Saudi Aramco raised its October official selling price for propane by $55 a tonne to $680, and for butane by $70 a tonne to $730, while Algeria's Sonatrach raised its own October propane price by $110 a tonne to $670 and its butane price by $140 a tonne to $750, according to Reuters reporting carried on October 1.

Both benchmarks serve as reference points for LPG supply contracts into different regions, Aramco's into the Asia Pacific market and Sonatrach's into the Mediterranean, Black Sea and Turkish markets, and the simultaneous increase from both suppliers points to a genuinely tighter global LPG market heading into the northern hemisphere winter rather than a one off regional move. For Nigeria, which still imports a meaningful share of its LPG even as domestic capacity grows through projects like NLNG's planned 50% production increase and the newly completed Asiko terminal in Lagos that we covered in detail two editions ago, these upward moves in the international reference prices remain one of the clearest reasons why cooking gas costs at home have stayed elevated despite the new supply coming on stream domestically.

WHERE RHOFURD ENERGY COMES IN

This weekend is a near perfect illustration of why energy supply planning cannot rest on any single signal, however reassuring it looks. The G7 announced one of the largest coordinated reserve releases of the year on Friday, and Brent still dropped only briefly before climbing back above $102 that same evening. OPEC+ confirmed on Sunday that it is holding output steady, a decision markets had already priced in, even as Gulf producers continue pumping well below their own quotas because of the war. And in the middle of all of that calm, orderly diplomacy, a fireball was still rising over an Aramco facility near Riyadh on Saturday. None of these signals cancel each other out. They all sit on the market at once, and that is exactly the kind of environment where a business cannot afford its own energy supply to be only as reliable as the calmest headline of the week.

Rhofurd Energy Limited supplies LPG, propane and condensate, delivering operational standards so our clients receive quality gases for their production needs. When Nigeria's own gas story is this encouraging, domestic supply crossing 2 billion cubic feet a day, $3.5 billion already committed to new projects, a thirty year old LNG project suddenly back on the table, it still depends on the same patient, reliable execution that keeps a factory running day to day, regardless of what happens in Riyadh or Salalah or Geneva that week. That is the position we have built, and it is where we intend to stay.

Stay energized. That's the story, and we will keep tracking these shifts closely in Energy Nigeria with Rhofurd.

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