The report, which is the first in CPEEL's monograph series builds on the major policy objectives in downstream petroleum sector that have been explicitly or implicitly pursued by the government since Nigeria became a major world net exporter of petroleum in the 1970s. It provides a vivid illustration of the sector’s inefficient performance as seen in the perennial paradox of spending billions of dollars annually to import petroleum products despite domestic refining capacity of 450,000 barrels per day. This is in addition to the expenditure of billions of US dollars on the rehabilitation of the domestic refineries with no sustained improvement in refinery utilization.
It identifies four key issues which are missing from the current debate on regulation and deregulation, and calls for a paradigm shift in policy in favour of phased but full deregulation and privatisation of the downstream petroleum products market in Nigeria by 2015. The monograph can be downloaded 
monograph-1.pdf