A severe domestic supply shortage of Liquefied Petroleum Gas has driven the average retail price of cooking gas to between ₦1,800 and ₦2,000 per kilogram in major parts of Nigeria, as depot costs spike following output drops and production glitches at the Dangote Refinery.
Dwellers across various Nigerian urban hubs face increasingly expensive domestic utility costs as a severe structural shortage of Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG), commonly referred to as cooking gas, continues to worsen nationwide. Rather than showing signs of stabilization, the rising cost of the essential household commodity is hitting families with unprecedented intensity across Lagos, Ogun, Ondo, and Oyo states. The persistent breakdown in the domestic supply network has generated deep anxiety among average Nigerian households and independent energy merchants, who warn that the commodity is fast becoming a luxury item far beyond the reach of the urban poor.
Speaking on the developmental crunch, the National President of the Nigerian Association of Liquefied Petroleum Gas Marketers (NALPGM), Edu Inyang, confirmed that the domestic sourcing pipeline for LPG has deteriorated significantly. Inyang revealed that bulk buyers and independent distributors are currently forced to pay premium depot rates ranging between ₦29.5 million and ₦30 million to secure a single 20-metric-tonne truckload of the product. The high depot overhead has triggered an immediate parallel surge at retail filling points, pushing the current average price of one kilogram of LPG to between ₦1,800 and ₦2,000 depending on location and immediate neighborhood demand. Highlighting the difficult commercial environment, Inyang stated, “The situation has not improved, but rather growing worse. The price of the product keeps increasing. Of course, it’s what we bought that we would sell. The situation is not funny,” as localized consumers like Daniel Ayomide, a student at the Federal University of Technology, Akure, confirmed shelling out ₦1,800 per kilogram at weekend retail stalls.
A high-ranking executive within NALPGM, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, traced the root of the sudden market crisis directly to recent operational constraints at the 650,000-barrel-per-day Dangote Petroleum Refinery. The independent official explained that the mega facility has been unable to sustain its robust 2025 supply capacity when its massive local output single-handedly controlled nearly 50 percent of the domestic market and forced down prices. Reflecting on the refinery’s changing market dynamics and how the sudden drop in local refining output caught international suppliers off guard, the official remarked, “Importation by other sources reduced drastically when Dangote took the market by storm with the quantity the refinery was putting into the market, even the effect it had in reducing the price of LPG to the extent that marketers and the entire value chain were singing his praises,” before adding that, “But today Dangote is bedeviled with production glitches and also meeting other contractual demands even outside the country that its LPG contribution is no longer significant to make any meaningful impact in the domestic market.”
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