KEY POINTS

• The Hormuz closure since March has pulled millions of barrels off the market, sending buyers to Nigeria’s light, low-sulfur crude.
• Benedict Peters’ Aiteo now ships Nembe crude by tanker to dodge an oil mafia that gutted its pipeline.
• Aliko Dangote’s 650,000-barrel refinery is running flat out, and he is now pumping his own crude as well.

When Iran shut the Strait of Hormuz on March 4, the move pulled roughly nine million barrels of crude off the global market each day, along with another five million barrels of refined products. Buyers went looking for replacements, and Nigeria’s light, low-sulfur grades landed near the top of almost every list. That is where Benedict Peters comes in.

Peters founded Aiteo in 2008, and the company’s Niger Delta fields pump Nembe crude, a grade refiners treat as an almost perfect stand-in for the heavier, sulfur-rich oil that used to flow out of the Persian Gulf. Because Nembe needs little desulfurization, refineries burn far less energy turning it into gasoline, diesel and kerosene. In a starved market, that edge carries a hefty premium.

Nigeria has leaned into the demand. Output has climbed from about 1.4 million barrels a day at the start of the conflict to between 1.7 and 1.8 million, and industry sources say the country could technically reach between 2.4 million and three million barrels, a level it last hit when its infrastructure ran clean. The fields are there. The reserves are there. Something else keeps getting in the way.

An oil mafia takes its cut

That something is theft, and the scale is staggering. Aiteo laid a 97-kilometer pipeline after 2008 to move Nembe crude to an Atlantic export terminal, then shut it down entirely after as much as 50 percent of the oil vanished in transit, siphoned off by what insiders call an oil mafia operating with the alleged help of contractors, soldiers and middlemen. Satellite images that show the line going into the ground in 2009 show it essentially gone by late 2022.

Peters’ answer was to quit the pipeline and take to the water. Since 2023, Aiteo has run roughly 130-meter river tankers out to the Galilean 7, a converted supertanker anchored 27 kilometers offshore. It is slower than a working pipeline. It is also a lot harder to rob.

Dangote’s refining bet pays off

Aliko Dangote is winning the other half of the trade. His 650,000-barrel-a-day complex near Lagos, the largest single fuel production line on earth, has hit full stride exactly as global fuel markets buckle. In April the plant turned out 54 million liters of gasoline, 24 million liters of diesel and 23 million liters of kerosene a day, regulator data shows. One Swiss trader called it a genuine game changer for West Africa.

Now Dangote is pumping his own crude too, from the Kalaekule field offshore, where production began in April. He has not escaped the mafia either. In mid-April the army arrested 15 men accused of trying to steal crude from a vessel feeding the refinery, and Dangote has gone to court against the regulator over import licenses he argues should be obsolete.

Whether Nigeria turns this rare advantage into lasting wealth, or watches it leak away, is the one question no satellite can answer.