A Sharp Tuesday Drop. Government Pushes for More Private Capital Across Refining and Gas Infrastructure.

Hey there! Welcome back to Energy Nigeria with Rhofurd.

This edition lands right after Nigeria marked its 66th Independence Day, and it has been a week where the financial side of the energy story was just as loud as the geopolitical side. Oil swung from a sharp Tuesday selloff to a Thursday jump of more than $4 a barrel on a single piece of Chinese policy news, the US tapped its emergency reserve for the second time this year, and in Nigeria, NNPC posted its best profit in years, a Lagos summit put hard numbers on the country's crude supply gap, and a new LPG terminal opened with a promise to bring cooking gas prices down. Let's walk through everything from Tuesday 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 SHARP TUESDAY DROP, A THURSDAY SPIKE ON CHINA, AND A CHOPPY FRIDAY

This week's price action is worth walking through day by day, because each session had its own distinct driver and the swings were large even by this market's recent standards. On Tuesday, September 29, oil settled sharply lower, with Brent crude futures closing down $2.69, or 2.6%, at $102.59 a barrel, and US West Texas Intermediate settling down $3.22, or 3.5%, at $89.38. The trigger was a genuine recovery story rather than a diplomatic one. Saudi Arabia resumed oil tanker loadings from its Red Sea port of Yanbu after restarting operations on the East West Pipeline, the main route that lets Saudi crude bypass the Strait of Hormuz entirely, and Kpler shipping data released that day showed crude oil exports from Middle East producers had rebounded in September to 16.328 million barrels a day, the highest level recorded since the US Israeli war on Iran began in late February. One trading executive summed up the mechanics neatly, noting that the more oil flows out of the Middle East, the less bargaining power Iran holds in its talks with Washington, which ties the physical recovery directly to the diplomatic track. Even with Tuesday's drop, Brent was still headed for a monthly gain of around 13% to 15% for September as a whole, and WTI for a gain of roughly 4%. Separately that day, President Trump denied reports that Washington had offered Tehran sanctions relief as part of negotiations, pushing back on suggestions that any concessions were on the table.

Wednesday, September 30 saw a partial rebound. By 05:06 Eastern Time, Brent crude futures for November delivery were up 1.0% at $103.64 a barrel, while WTI gained 0.9% to $90.21, as investors weighed the improving Middle East export flows against continuing concerns about disruptions through the strait itself. Deutsche Bank analysts framed it well, saying traders were still pricing in a lengthier period of disruption even as the increased oil flows out of the Gulf had eased the near term pressure. In other words, the market was recovering some of Tuesday's losses without fully buying into the idea that the crisis was over.

Thursday, October 1 then delivered the sharpest single day move of the week. Oil jumped more than $4 a barrel after a Wall Street Journal report said the United States was sending more troops and additional carriers to the Middle East, and, more consequentially for prices, after Reuters reported that Chinese refiners had suspended exports of oil products to regions beyond Hong Kong and Macau until further notice, citing four people briefed on the matter. Prices had actually fallen about 1% early in the session before reversing sharply on the China news. UBS analyst Giovanni Staunovo said the Chinese export ban suggests concerns about domestic product availability, and noted it remains to be seen whether the measures will support higher crude imports after recent drawdowns in Chinese crude and fuel stocks. The timing mattered too, because China began a weeklong holiday that same Thursday without giving major refiners a green light to export to anywhere other than Hong Kong and Macau in October, and it was not immediately clear whether Beijing would resume permitting exports once the holiday ends on October 7. This compounded an already tight global diesel market. Russian President Vladimir Putin said Russia will not supply diesel to global energy markets until sanctions against Moscow are lifted, and global diesel inventories were already stretched thin following damage to refinery infrastructure in both the Persian Gulf and Russia. Analysts cautioned that the impact of China's move would not be as large as the loss of Russian and Middle Eastern refined product exports, but it added one more squeeze to a market already short of diesel, jet fuel and gasoline even as crude supply itself has largely recovered.

By this morning, Friday, October 2, the market had settled into a more cautious mood. Brent was trading around $102.24 to $102.60 a barrel and WTI around $92.62 to $93.14, drifting only modestly after Thursday's jump. KCM Trade chief analyst Tim Waterer captured the mood well, telling Reuters that the market is taking stock of a distinctly mixed set of signals this week, and that after a disruptive Thursday, traders were simply taking a breather. He added that a healthier looking Saudi export picture is being offset by reports of another US aircraft carrier heading toward the Gulf and by China's decision to curb refined product exports. For the week as a whole, Brent was on track for a loss of roughly 1.93%, even after a 14% gain across all of September, while WTI managed a modest weekly gain following its own 4% rise for the month. President Trump, speaking at the White House, kept the pressure on Iran rhetorically, telling reporters that Tehran will either sign a very fair deal or they won't exist any longer.

Underneath all of this daily noise sits one consistent fact worth repeating. JPMorgan analysts led by Natasha Kaneva estimated that crude exports from the Middle East have rebounded to roughly 17.5 million barrels a day, or about 98% of pre war levels, describing it as a remarkable recovery for a region still formally at war. Lloyds List chief editor Richard Meade, speaking at an online briefing on October 1, pointed to a steady upward curve of crude tanker transits through the Strait of Hormuz dating back to mid July, but cautioned that higher exports do not necessarily mean the strait has become safe. They simply show, he said, that the oil industry has become accustomed to working around that danger. That distinction between crude flows recovering and refined product flows staying tight is exactly what is now driving prices, and it is the refined product side, diesel especially, where the real shortage sits.

THE US TAPS ITS RESERVE AGAIN AS FUEL PRICES CLIMB TOWARD THE MIDTERMS

On Tuesday, September 29, the US Department of Energy announced it would offer to loan energy companies up to 40 million barrels of crude oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, a move the White House framed as an effort to blunt rising gasoline and diesel prices less than two months before the November midterm elections. This offer represents the final tranche of a 172 million barrel commitment the United States made back in March as part of a wider deal among roughly 30 International Energy Agency member countries to release 400 million barrels collectively in response to the war's impact on supply. The release is structured as an exchange rather than an outright sale, meaning companies that borrow the oil must eventually return it along with additional barrels as interest, and the Energy Department has said the programme will ultimately return around 200 million barrels to the reserve over the following year, roughly 20% more than was released. Bids for this latest tranche are due by 11:00am Central Time on October 6. The White House is also urging the European Union to draw down its own emergency diesel inventories to help ease global prices. Energy analyst Patrick De Haan, who runs GasBuddy, was skeptical that either step would move the needle much, arguing that strapped refinery capacity, not crude oil supply itself, is what is really driving fuel prices higher, and that meaningful relief requires addressing the underlying geopolitical tensions directly. It is also worth noting that a similar reserve offer back in June attracted very little interest, with companies agreeing to borrow only about 500,000 barrels, so there is real uncertainty about whether this latest offer will be taken up in any meaningful volume. Once this release is completed, the reserve is projected to fall to its lowest level since 1982, with inventories recorded at around 284.5 to 285.4 million barrels as of mid September, not far above the roughly 250 million barrel threshold generally regarded as the minimum needed for the infrastructure to keep functioning safely.

NIGERIA: NNPC POSTS N7.2 TRILLION PROFIT AS PRODUCTION HITS A FIVE YEAR HIGH

The single biggest Nigerian energy story of the week came from NNPC Limited itself. On Tuesday, September 29, following its Annual General Meeting and second Earnings Call with financial and business analysts in Abuja, the national oil company announced audited results for the year ended December 31, 2025 showing Profit After Tax of N7.2 trillion, a 33% increase from N5.4 trillion in 2024, even as revenue actually fell to N34.5 trillion. Group Chief Executive Officer Bashir Bayo Ojulari attributed the gain to disciplined execution and a capable workforce, and the broader set of financial indicators backed that framing up. EBITDA rose 22% to N18.0 trillion, earnings per share climbed 32% to N35.9, operating cash flow grew 16% to N12.8 trillion, and return on equity improved by 200 basis points to 16%. The board declared a dividend of N5.8 trillion, up 35% from the prior year, and government remittances climbed 39% to N22.3 trillion across 2025.

The operational numbers behind those financial results are just as notable. Crude oil and condensate production averaged 1.77 million barrels a day across 2025, the company's highest level in five years, while natural gas output averaged 7.2 billion standard cubic feet a day, a three year high. Total oil and condensate production for the year came to 565.8 million barrels, up 5% from 2024, with NNPC's own equity share of that production rising 11% to 223.7 million barrels. NNPC Board Chairman Ahmadu Musa Kida, speaking in his Independence Day message on Thursday, October 1, credited much of the improvement to pipeline security, noting that reconciliation factors between crude produced by operators and volumes actually delivered at export terminals have improved to around 90%, a dramatic turnaround from the 10% to 20% range recorded as recently as early 2024, when some major facilities were operating at less than a tenth of producers' reported output. He attributed that shift to community based surveillance, strategic interventions and coordinated security operations across the Niger Delta. On the infrastructure side, the results statement also referenced completion of the AKK River Niger crossing and full completion of the 40 inch, 623 kilometre Ajaokuta Kaduna Kano gas pipeline mainline, both of which are central to expanding gas availability to northern Nigeria.

NIGERIA: NNPC AND DANGOTE, AND THE CRUDE SUPPLY GAP FACING NIGERIA'S REFINERIES

Speaking to reporters on Tuesday, September 29 at the same briefing on NNPC's 2025 results, Ojulari addressed the company's relationship with Dangote Petroleum Refinery directly, saying NNPC is sustaining crude oil supply to the refinery under the Federal Government approved naira for crude arrangement, while additional, dollar denominated crude volumes continue to flow separately to help NNPC meet its own largely dollar based obligations. Most of our commitments are in dollars, he explained, so there is no point receiving naira and then going to buy dollars to meet those obligations, a comment that helps explain why the arrangement has always combined naira denominated cargoes with dollar denominated ones rather than converting entirely to local currency. Ojulari also said the company is shifting greater security attention toward smaller pipeline networks and the thousands of individual well heads scattered across land, swamp, seasonal swamp and shallow offshore terrain, deploying technologies including fibre optics and high technology well head cages to detect intruders and respond more quickly to theft and pipeline breaches.

That supply relationship sits against a bigger structural challenge that NUPRC laid out in detail at the third Nigeria Oil Refining Summit in Lagos on Monday, September 28. NUPRC Chief Executive Officer Oritsemeyiwa Eyesan, represented by Deputy Director Boma Atiyegoba, disclosed that crude oil producers offered a combined 182 million barrels to domestic refiners between January and August 2026, of which only 112 million barrels, or 61.4%, were actually transacted, leaving a gap of 70 million barrels between what was offered and what was completed. Eyesan noted that the 182 million barrels offered actually exceeded domestic refiners' own declared requirement of 154.6 million barrels over the same period, working out to about 118% of stated demand on paper, which makes the shortfall more puzzling than a simple story of insufficient supply. She was careful to stress that the gap between offers and completed transactions does not amount to a failure by either side. Producers, she said, remain concerned about payment security, offtake reliability and their existing export commitments, while refiners worry about crude availability, delivery schedules and pricing, a shared commercial challenge rather than a one sided problem. Looking further ahead, she noted that in the medium term, Nigeria's domestic refineries could require more than 1.5 million barrels of crude a day once rehabilitation, expansion and the commissioning of additional modular plants are complete, a figure that would approach Nigeria's entire current liquids output of 1.68 million barrels a day as of August 2026. To help close the gap, NUPRC said it has completed stakeholder consultations on a proposed domestic crude swap arrangement, and is separately accelerating field development work and efforts to restore shut in wells and marginal assets that could add further barrels to the pool available for both export and domestic refining.

NIGERIA: GOVERNMENT PUSHES FOR MORE PRIVATE CAPITAL ACROSS REFINING AND GAS INFRASTRUCTURE

Nigeria's government used two separate events this week to press the same underlying message, that rising crude production alone will not transform the country's energy sector unless it is matched by sustained private investment across refining, gas processing, pipelines, storage and logistics. At the maiden PTDF Journal Summit 2026 in Abuja, themed Private Sector Participation in Nigeria's Midstream and Downstream Petroleum Sector, Petroleum Technology Development Fund Executive Secretary Professor Shuaibu Shehu Aliyu said private investors are showing growing interest in refining, gas processing, logistics, storage and distribution, but that financing gaps, regulatory uncertainty and a shortage of technical skills remain real obstacles. He argued that realising the gains on offer, economic growth, job creation and technology transfer among them, will take more than money and facilities alone, and called for research that solves industry problems in practice rather than stopping at publication. In his goodwill message to the same summit, Minister of State for Petroleum Resources Heineken Lokpobiri, speaking through his Technical Adviser Emmanuel Sinimie, said sustainable development of Nigeria's petroleum sector requires strong and vibrant private sector participation, and pointed to the emergence and expansion of Dangote Petroleum Refinery and the growing number of modular refineries, including Waltersmith and Aradel, as proof of what private capital can achieve in the downstream sector. He said full implementation of the Petroleum Industry Act has created a framework intended to encourage private investment in gas processing, refining, petrochemicals and distribution, while acknowledging that limited gas processing and evacuation infrastructure, pipeline integrity issues and other gaps continue to affect operating costs, asset utilisation and investment economics.

A second announcement this week put real numbers behind that push. The Midstream and Downstream Gas Infrastructure Fund said on Sunday, September 28 that it has used N671 billion in public capital to attract roughly N1.6 trillion in private sector investment across 31 gas infrastructure projects and 205 individual assets nationwide, a mobilisation ratio of roughly 2.4 times its own contribution. MDGIF Executive Director Oluwole Adama said the fund deliberately moved beyond conventional public sector financing in order to draw in additional private investors, and identified high financing costs, inadequate infrastructure, regulatory uncertainty and technical and commercial risks as the main factors that have historically constrained midstream gas investment. At the same event, Petroleum Products Retail Outlets Owners Association President Billy Gillis-Harry called for an open and competitive downstream petroleum market, arguing that Nigeria should not allow a single company to control petroleum product supply, a comment that echoes the ongoing tension between Dangote and independent importers we have covered in previous editions. Separately, Vanguard reported this week that indigenous operators now account for roughly 50% of Nigeria's oil production, which officials have cited as further evidence of how far private, domestically owned capital has already reshaped the upstream sector alongside the downstream changes driven by Dangote and the modular refineries.

NIGERIA: LAGOS GETS A NEW LPG TERMINAL BUILT TO UNDERCUT COOKING GAS PRICES

On Tuesday, September 29, Asiko Energy Holdings Limited marked the mechanical completion of a 5,000 metric tonne LPG and propane terminal in Ijora, Lagos, a project that has been nearly two decades in the making since it was first conceived, with first ship cargoes expected to arrive in November 2026. The fully mounded facility connects to three major Apapa jetties, giving it multiple marine supply points and reducing reliance on less efficient existing supply routes, and it is designed to receive LPG from NLNG and other Nigerian producers, including volumes that were previously routed toward export markets. Asiko Energy Holdings Chairman Alex Ogedegbe described the project at the commissioning ceremony as the product of investment, partnership and collaboration, calling it another chapter in Nigeria's gas story, while Managing Director Felix Ekundayo laid out the company's actual pricing strategy in some detail. The terminal's real innovation, he explained, is its ability to receive cheaper, off specification LPG grades from a wider range of global producers and blend them to meet Nigerian market specifications. It's not the right specification, he said, but it can be blended to make the right specification, which will help us drop down the price of cooking gas. He added that this blending flexibility would give the company much greater freedom in sourcing and pricing LPG going forward, and that the company separately plans to enter the compressed natural gas market, with two locations already identified for future CNG facilities. The project, backed by the Midstream and Downstream Gas Infrastructure Fund, is the first phase of what Asiko describes as a planned tri fuel gas infrastructure strategy covering LPG, propane and LNG together, and is expected to roughly double the company's current workforce of about 150 employees once fully operational. Wema Bank Deputy Managing Director Oluwole Ajimisinmi, speaking on behalf of the project's financiers, said the terminal would improve product availability and supply chain efficiency across the wider market.

One important caution came from NLNG itself at the same ceremony. NLNG Managing Director Adeleye Falade said that increased storage capacity alone does not automatically translate into lower retail LPG prices, which also depend on product supply, import costs, transportation, exchange rates and other distribution costs, a useful reminder that infrastructure is necessary but not sufficient to bring cooking gas prices down on its own. Falade used the same platform to disclose a significant expansion plan of NLNG's own, announcing that the company intends to increase its LPG production capacity by 50% by the end of 2027 in order to meet rising domestic demand and strengthen Nigeria's cooking gas supply chain. He noted that NLNG pioneered the introduction of cooking gas into the Nigerian market back in 2005, when it began producing 70,000 tonnes a year and held the entire domestic market to itself, a scale that today's much larger national demand has long since outgrown.

GLOBAL LPG: ARAMCO AND SONATRACH RAISE OCTOBER PRICES AS WINTER DEMAND BUILDS

The international benchmarks that ultimately shape Nigeria's import costs moved higher again this week. 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, according to a Reuters report carried on Thursday, October 1 and corroborated by French language energy outlet Algerie Eco the same day. Algeria's Sonatrach moved even further, raising its October propane price by $110 a tonne to $670, and its butane price by $140 a tonne to $750. Both companies' pricing serves as an international benchmark, Aramco's for Middle East supply contracts into the Asia Pacific region and Sonatrach's for the Mediterranean, Black Sea and Turkish markets, and the simultaneous increase from both suppliers points toward a genuinely tighter global LPG market rather than a one off regional move. Energie-Media, the French language trade outlet that first carried the Sonatrach figures, linked the increase directly to the approach of the winter heating season alongside continued high crude oil prices more broadly. For Nigeria, which remains a meaningful importer of LPG even as domestic production grows, these upward moves in the international reference prices are one more reason why cooking gas costs at home have stayed elevated despite the new supply coming from projects like the Asiko terminal.

LNG: A WEEK OF DEALS AND EXPANSIONS THAT SHOW WHERE GLOBAL GAS DEMAND IS HEADING

Away from Nigeria specifically, this was an unusually active week for global LNG, and it is worth tracking because every one of these developments shapes the market Nigeria's own LNG sector, led by NLNG and its Train 7 expansion, is competing within. Reuters reported on Thursday, October 1 that US LNG exports rose to 10.9 million tonnes in September, up from 10.7 million tonnes in August, with Europe taking roughly 54% of total shipments as buyers worked to refill storage ahead of winter and effectively outbid Asian buyers for available cargoes, based on LSEG shipping data. The same day, ConocoPhillips announced a 20 year agreement to purchase 1 million tonnes of LNG annually from Venture Global beginning in 2030, a long dated commitment that underscores how buyers are still locking in supply years in advance despite the current market volatility. Venture Global also asked US regulators for authorisation to place Phase 1 of its Plaquemines LNG facility in Louisiana into full commercial service, moving the project a step closer to generating revenue from long term customer contracts. Further north, LNG Canada announced plans for a roughly C$33 billion, or about US$23 billion, expansion of its Kitimat facility in British Columbia that would double the terminal's export capacity to approximately 28 million tonnes of LNG a year, a project framed as strengthening Canada's position as a major supplier to Asian markets. Separately, Japan's INPEX exercised its pre emptive right to acquire an additional stake in Australia's Ichthys LNG project, which produces LNG, condensate and LPG together, a reminder that condensate and LPG revenue streams are increasingly bundled into the economics of major LNG projects rather than treated as side products. Taken together, these developments show a global LNG market that is still expanding aggressively on long term contracts even as near term prices remain volatile, which is exactly the environment NLNG is trying to navigate as it pushes toward Train 7 and its own 50% LPG expansion target.

NIGERIA: WHAT NUPRC'S OWN JULY FIGURES TELL US ABOUT CONDENSATE

For readers tracking the condensate side of Nigeria's liquids production specifically, NUPRC's own published data for July 2026 is worth restating in full. Nigeria's combined crude oil and condensate production for the month averaged 1.67 million barrels a day, made up of approximately 1.505 million barrels a day of crude oil and about 0.17 million barrels a day of condensate. That condensate contribution, while smaller than the crude oil component, remains a meaningful and consistent part of Nigeria's overall liquids output, and it sits outside the strict crude oil figure that determines Nigeria's OPEC quota compliance each month. It is also broadly consistent with the roughly 177,600 barrel a day gap we calculated between NUPRC's August crude and combined figures in our previous edition, suggesting condensate output has stayed fairly stable across the two months even as total crude plus condensate volumes moved slightly.

WHERE RHOFURD ENERGY COMES IN

Step back and look at what this week actually contained. A single piece of Chinese policy news added more than $4 to a barrel of oil in one session, even as the underlying crude supply picture had been steadily recovering all month. NNPC posted its best profit in years on the back of pipeline security gains that took years to build. And Nigeria's own refiners are leaving 70 million barrels of available domestic crude untransacted, not because the oil isn't there, but because payment terms, delivery timing and pricing haven't yet lined up cleanly between producers and refiners. None of that is a story about scarcity. It is a story about coordination, about whether the right volume of the right product reaches the right place at the right price, at the right time.

That is precisely the problem Rhofurd Energy Limited exists to solve for the businesses we serve. We supply LPG, propane and condensate, delivering operational standards so our clients receive quality gases for their production needs, without having to absorb the coordination failures that show up elsewhere in this market, whether that is a 70 million barrel gap between crude offers and completed transactions, or a terminal still waiting for its first cargo to arrive. When the businesses around you are exposed to a benchmark that can jump 4% in a single session on a policy announcement out of Beijing, the value of a supplier whose reliability does not depend on that session going well becomes obvious. 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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