With the Middle East Crisis defined by the US-Iran faceoff creating major disruptions to global oil markets, Nigeria has become the source of stabilising the Indian energy industry.

It was gathered that India’s state-owned Hindustan Petroleum Corporation Limited (HPCL) recently bought a total of four million barrels of Nigerian crude, even as the country’s refiners frantically sought alternative supply sources to survive the persistent crisis.

According to Reuters, HPCL purchased two million barrels of Nigerian crude through tenders in two separate transactions, with the latest deal involving one million barrels each of Forcados and Bonga crude grades bought from Shell.

The cargoes are expected to supply HPCL’s Visakh refinery in Andhra Pradesh, southern India, which has a crude processing capacity of 300,000 barrels per day. The latest purchase came after HPCL earlier acquired another two million barrels of Nigerian crude from commodity trader Glencore through a tender.

The earlier purchase comprised one million barrels each of Okwuibome and Utapate crude grades from Nigeria. The crude bought from Glencore will be supplied to HPCL’s Rajasthan refinery, HPCL Rajasthan Refinery Limited, which has a processing capacity of 180,000 barrels per day.

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According to Oilprice.com, HPCL owns a 74 percent stake in HRRL, while the remaining stake is held by the Rajasthan State Government.

The purchases highlight the growing demand for Nigerian crude among Indian refiners as supplies from the Middle East remain disrupted by shipping constraints around the Strait of Hormuz and Bab el-Mandeb.

It was learnt that several Indian refiners have recently bought crude from Oman and West Africa through tenders as term supplies from the Middle East remain constrained.

India’s state-controlled Mangalore Refinery and Petrochemicals Limited (MRPL) has also acquired about one million barrels of Omani crude through a tender at a premium of about $3 per barrel to Dated Brent from Mitsui & Co Energy Trading Singapore, according to trade sources cited by Reuters earlier this week.

Meanwhile, Indian Oil Corporation (IOC), the country’s largest refiner by capacity, has also bought four million barrels of West African crude from Chevron.

The purchase includes Angola’s Nemba, Saxi Batuque and Clov grades, as well as Congo’s Djeno crude. Indian refiners are increasingly looking to crude suppliers as far away as Angola in Africa and Venezuela in South America after term supplies from the Middle East were again disrupted in July and failed to reach India as scheduled.

The Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPC Ltd) is contemplating a phased commissioning of its major gas project later this year, with the Ajaokuta-Kaduna-Kano (AKK) gas pipeline landing in Abuja.

The NNPC’s Executive Vice President, Gas, Power and New Energy, Olalekan Ogunleye, disclosed this recently at the 2026 Energy Business Development Forum on the AKK Gas Pipeline Project held at the Government House, Minna, Niger State.

According to a post on its social media handles, the NNPC Ltd quoted Ogunleye as saying that the pipeline had reached Abuja and would be commissioned in phases later in the year, while the Niger State section was expected to be completed before the end of 2026.

“The pipeline has reached Abuja and will be commissioned in phases later in the year, with the Niger State section due for completion before year-end,” Ogunleye said.

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The development marks a major milestone in the construction of the project, which is expected to support domestic gas utilisation and boost investment in gas-based industries along its corridor.

The AKK Gas Pipeline is a 40-inch, 614km linear pipeline system running from Ajaokuta in Kogi State to Kano, with associated intermediate and terminal gas facilities and other related equipment to transport natural gas to off-takers.

Last year, the NNPC Ltd announced that the pipeline had successfully crossed the River Niger, raising hopes of completing the project by the fourth quarter of 2025.

The Group Chief Executive Officer of the NNPC Limited, Bayo Ojulari, who announced the milestone in Abuja while delivering a keynote address at the 24th Nigeria Oil and Gas Conference and Exhibition, said the feat was achieved through effective and innovative contract re-engineering and industry collaboration.

The forum in Minna was organised to showcase the prospects and investment opportunities presented by the AKK project to investors and energy operators.

The event was themed, “Accelerating Domestic Gas Utilisation and Driving the Compressed Natural Gas Revolution along the AKK Corridor.”

Also speaking at the forum, Niger State Governor, Mohammed Umaru Bago, disclosed that the state government had designated an Industrial Development Park within the 1,000-square-kilometre AKK corridor in the state.

He said the park would create opportunities for investments in agro-allied industries, petrochemicals, and fertiliser production.

“The State Government has designated an Industrial Development Park within the 1,000-square-kilometre AKK corridor in the state, opening the route to agro-allied, petrochemical and fertiliser investment opportunities.”

It has come to light that profiteering by major cooking gas offtakers accounted for the recent scarcity and skyrocketing of prices of Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LNG) in Nigeria.

The Nigeria LNG Limited (NLNG), has disclosed that it sold LNG at N800 per kilogramme to the major offtakers, who turned round to sell to Nigerians at N2,400 per kg, marking up the product by N1,600 during the recent nationwide scarcity.

It said that some of the offtakers were hoarding product at terminals and creating artificial scarcity, a practice that pushed prices far above regulatory benchmarks and inflicted hardship on households across the country.

These facts were shared by the Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer, Adeleye Falade, at the NLNG Facts & Figures Presentation in Lagos.

“What we found out is that a number of people who take products, they will put it in their terminal, and they are part of those that have created the artificial scarcity that has led to the price increase. When the product was being sold at N2,400 per kg in the market, guess how much they were lifting it from us? It was between N800 and N900 per kg,” Falade stated.

The Nigerian Midstream and Downstream Petroleum Regulatory Authority (NMDPRA) had recommended that after transportation costs, retail prices should not exceed N1,000 to N1,200 per kg.

“So there’s also some distortion that happened on the sales side, which I know the regulators are working on right now to get control of it,” Falade added.

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The NLNG supplies LPG to the Nigerian market through its vessel, Alfred Temile. More than 15 terminal owners offtake the product as middlemen before selling in bulk to gas plant operators and independent petroleum marketers.

The hoarding at terminal level, according to NLNG’s assessment by one of the big four consulting firms, meant product was not getting to retailers fast enough, tightening supply and inflating prices.

In response, NLNG said it has changed its allocation strategy. “So preference for us is not for those kinds of people, but those that can supply directly to the retailers,” Falade said. The new ranked order prioritises offtakers with storage capacity and a proven direct-to-retail network.

Despite the scarcity at retail level, Falade said NLNG did not have a problem around infrastructure or capability to move its product to the market.

“That’s not a limitation for us… We sell all of our products. We actually have more demand than we’re able to sell. Our challenge was not that people were not able to take the product. Every cooking gas that we made, we had buyers,” he said.

He acknowledged industry-wide infrastructure deficits but said they have not reached the point of stranding NLNG’s output. “There is an infrastructure deficit, but it hasn’t played itself to the point where we become stranded with the product that we have made. No, we haven’t seen it to that extent.”

Annual LPG consumption in Nigeria has grown to 1.8 million tons in 2026 from 1.5 million tons in 2023, underscoring rising dependence on cooking gas as households shift away from firewood and kerosene.

To ease pressure on prices, NLNG said the completion of Train 7 will be the immediate game-changer. The $5 billion project is progressing at Bonny Island in Rivers State with about 16,000 people working daily.

The completion of the Train 7 is going to increase the company’s LNG capacity by 35 per centIt, taking it from 22 MTPA to 30 MTPA. Aside from LNG, the project will also increase NLNG’s LPG production by 50 percent.

Last year NLNG supplied 500,000 tons of LPG to the domestic market. With Train 7 on stream, an additional 250,000 tons will be added annually, taking the total annual supply to 750,000 tons,” the CEO said.

The extra volume is expected to improve availability and moderate the price volatility that has plagued the market in recent months.

Falade said NMDPRA is already working to rein in the LPG market distortion with introduction of NLNG’s ranked offtaker system that is also designed to cut out middlemen who warehouse product instead of distributing it.

Beyond LPG, NLNG said it is fast-tracking a 1.1 MTPA domestic LNG supply project targeted at industries and transport.

The company had in June 2021 announced its plan to begin supplying LNG to the domestic market with an initial 1.1 million metric tons from July 2022. The company went ahead to sign an offtake agreement with three companies including However, that project has been stalled.

Falade said the project remained on course. “We do have a project already working around the domestic LNG supply… It hasn’t changed from the 1.1 MTPA that was declared at that point in time. We are behind on schedule, but we’re still working on it,” Falade said.