Cooking gas jumped to N1,200 per kilogram from N1,000, diesel climbed to N1,300 per liter from N1,200, and petrol rose to N939 per liter from N837 — with analysts warning prices could climb further if fighting between the U.S., Israel and Iran drags on.

The increases followed the Dangote Petroleum Refinery’s decision to raise depot prices across all three products, with independent marketers and depot owners quickly passing the costs on to consumers.

“Our prices are determined by the cost at which we load,” said Chinedu Ukadike, public relations officer for the Independent Petroleum Marketers Association of Nigeria. “Other costs like transportation and operations have to be factored into the overall cost.”

Crude hits $84

Nigeria’s Bonny Light crude surged to $84 per barrel Tuesday, its highest since July 2025, after Iran announced the closure of the Strait of Hormuz in retaliation for ongoing U.S. and Israeli strikes. Brent crude climbed to $84.53 per barrel from $80, while West Texas Intermediate rose to $77.16 from $72.24.

Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps warned that any vessel attempting to transit the strait — which carries roughly 20 percent of the world’s daily oil and gas trade — does so at its own risk. Shipping activity through the corridor has already fallen sharply, with tanker shortages pushing storage tanks at southern export terminals toward critical levels.

President Donald Trump, speaking Tuesday for the first time since the strikes began, said the conflict could last considerably longer than the four to five weeks initially projected.

“Whatever it takes — right from the beginning, we projected four to five weeks, but we have the capability to go far longer than that,” Trump told reporters.

A double-edged sword for Nigeria

Economists described the oil price surge as a mixed blessing for Africa’s largest crude producer.

Muda Yusuf, chief executive of the Centre for the Promotion of Private Enterprise, said Nigeria stood to gain through higher export receipts, improved foreign exchange inflows and stronger government revenues — but warned those gains were far from guaranteed.

“Nigeria’s current crude output has fluctuated around 1.4 to 1.6 million barrels per day, below installed capacity and vulnerable to oil theft, pipeline vandalism and under-investment in upstream infrastructure,” Yusuf said. “Without a sustained improvement in production efficiency and security, Nigeria may not fully optimise any price windfall.”

He cautioned that if the conflict escalated and weakened global economic growth, oil demand could soften, erasing the fiscal gains. “The fiscal upside is therefore inherently fragile,” he said.

Olufemi Idowu, a partner at Kreston Pedabo, said the price increases would ripple through the broader economy, driving up transportation costs, construction materials and consumer goods prices at a time when purchasing power was already under pressure.

“When prices of goods and services rise, purchasing power declines,” Idowu said. “This situation will inevitably lead to higher inflation, as more money chases fewer goods.”

The National President of the Oil and Gas Services Providers Association of Nigeria, Colman Obasi, called on the federal government to introduce relief measures for households and small businesses, noting that the government itself would earn additional foreign exchange from crude oil sales during the crisis.

George Onafowokan, managing director of Coleman Wires and Cables, urged industries still dependent on petroleum products to consider switching to gas, while crediting the Dangote refinery with cushioning what could have been a worse supply shock.

“Nigerians should commend the Dangote Petroleum Refinery because our current huge domestic capacity means that our problems would have been more if we did not have that refinery operating,” he said.

JPMorgan Chase has projected Brent crude could reach $120 per barrel if prolonged hostilities further disrupt flows through the Strait of Hormuz — a scenario analysts said would push Nigerian pump prices well above N1,000 per liter.