The Chairman of the House Committee on Petroleum Resources (Downstream), Rep. Ikenga Ugochinyere, has promised legislative support for the creation of a transparent West African refined fuel pricing benchmark.
Ugochinyere gave this commitment at the West Africa Refined Fuel Market 2026 Conference in Abuja, organised by the Nigerian Midstream and Downstream Petroleum Regulatory Authority (NMDPRA) on Tuesday. The conference was themed: “Funding West Africa Infrastructure and Distribution to Create a Transparent Market for Regional Price Benchmarks.”
He said West Africa’s emergence as a refining hub makes it necessary for the region to develop a credible benchmark for refined petroleum products, noting that the region has historically been a “price taker” despite being a major consumer of these products.
“For the better part of half a century, West Africa has been a price taker in a market it consumes from but does not speak in. We import the product, then we import the price signal, and we pay a premium for both,” he said.
He added that his committee would work with the NMDPRA and the West Africa Regulator Forum to ensure the price reporting architecture behind West African reference prices gets clear statutory support and enforceable compliance obligations.
“A voluntary benchmark is a fragile benchmark,” he said.
Ugochinyere noted that the development of the 650,000 barrels-per-day Dangote Refinery, the ongoing rehabilitation of the Port Harcourt, Warri and Kaduna refineries, and reforms under the Petroleum Industry Act (PIA) have reshaped the regional market dynamics. He argued that a region that refines petroleum products must also build the capacity to price them.
“A region that refines must price. A region that prices must have a benchmark. A benchmark that is not ours will be someone else’s,” he said.
He identified liquidity, deliverability, data integrity and trust as the four pillars required for a credible regional benchmark, stressing that investment in storage facilities, jetties, pipelines, depots, metering, and road and rail evacuation infrastructure is central to achieving transparent price discovery.
He said a credible regional benchmark would allow West Africa to move from being described by external markets to defining its own market realities.
Nigeria is currently leading a regional push to establish an independent West African fuel price benchmark. The initiative, driven by the NMDPRA, aims to replace external pricing indices from Western Europe and the Mediterranean with a transparent, locally determined market system.
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