Nigeria’s Dangote refinery has achieved a major milestone with the arrival of its first gasoline shipment in the United States, marking a breakthrough in the country’s refined product exports beyond Africa.
According to vessel-tracking data and sources cited by Reuters, the cargo of 320,000 barrels was delivered aboard the Panama-flagged tanker Gemini Pearl, which docked at the Port of New York on Sunday. The shipment was arranged by commodity trader Vitol and North American fuel distributor Sunoco. Most of the cargo was sold to Sunoco, while Vitol retained a smaller share.
A second cargo from the Lagos-based refinery, sold by Glencore to Shell, is scheduled to arrive in New York on September 19. Both shipments confirm that gasoline produced at the Dangote refinery has met the stringent quality standards required for the U.S. market.
The 650,000-barrel-per-day refinery, located in Lekki, Lagos, began producing gasoline in September 2024 after initially starting operations with diesel and naphtha earlier that year. Owned by Nigerian industrialist Aliko Dangote, the facility is designed to meet all of Nigeria’s refined fuel needs and export surplus volumes.
“This collaboration marks an important step in expanding the reach of high-quality polypropylene produced at Dangote’s new refinery and petrochemical complex in Lekki, Nigeria,” Vinmar International, a global petrochemicals distributor partnering with the refinery, stated earlier this year when announcing plans for polypropylene exports.
The refinery has already exported gasoline to Asia and West Africa, with Nigerian media reporting a total of 1.1 billion liters shipped between June and early September 2025.
However, operations have faced setbacks. On August 29, the refinery’s Residue Fluidized Catalytic Cracking Unit (RFCCU), the critical unit for gasoline production, was shut down due to catalyst leaks. Analysts from IIR Energy have indicated that repairs could last until November, extending beyond earlier estimates of two weeks.
The outage raises concerns for Nigeria’s domestic market, which consumes over 50 million liters of gasoline daily.
The Dangote refinery was expected to replace much of the country’s costly fuel imports, but prolonged downtime could force the government and marketers to resume sourcing cargoes abroad at higher prices.
Despite the temporary disruption, the refinery’s first U.S.-bound shipments signal a shift in Nigeria’s role in global refined product markets, with exports now extending to North America alongside Africa and Asia.
