Cooking Gas Crisis: FG Sets Up Committee to Crash Price
To arrest the escalating price of Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG), otherwise known as cooking gas, the Minister of State for Petroleum Resources (Gas) Ekperikpe Ekpo, has constituted a committee with the mandate to come up with recommendations on how to boost supplies and crash LPG prices within a week.
The meeting, at the instance of the minister, was held at the NNPC Towers Abuja and had in attendance top officials of Chevron Nigeria Limited, led by Sansay Narasimi; Nigerian Midstream Downstream Petroleum Regulatory Authority (NMDPRA) led by the Authority Chief Executive(ACE) and Chief Executive Officer,Farouk Ahmed and the NNPCL.
A statement by spokesman to the Minister, Mr. Louis Ibah, said the committee is headed by the NMDPRA ACE/CEO.
Nigerians have in the last three months been confronted with an upsurge in the price of cooking gas with majority resorting to the use of dirty fuel including firewood, a development that has caused a setback to increased cooking gas penetration across the country.
Since the price surge, marketers within the LPG value chain have accused importers of profiteering, saying they were increasing prices at will without justification and consideration of poor Nigerians using gas for domestic and other uses.
The intervention on LPG crisis by the Minister may not be unconnected with the astronomical rise in recent months in the price of LPG per kg from about N700 to above N900 in some parts of the country and over N12,500 for a 12kg gas cylinder.
Key challenges identified as responsible for LPG price increase include FX sourcing for imports and insufficient supply to the domestic market by producers
Ekpo expressed the concerns of President Bola Tinubu, on the price surge and the attendant hardship on majority of citizens.
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The minister who noted that Nigeria is abundantly endowed with gas reserves, said the situation where some of the multinational firms were more concerned with gas exports without dedicating enough volumes for the domestic market was unacceptable and should be discouraged.
“With the exponential increase in the price of LPG, there is the need for the Federal Government to intervene and I am representing this at this moment. We acknowledge that some producers are exporting while we are faced with the challenges of importation.
Public interest is the overriding interest all over the world for the government, the demand for LPG will increase as we approach December…you have a public service obligation to collaborate with the government to ensure security of gas supply, we need to therefore bend backwards and find solutions, to ensure that we have sufficient supply and stability in-country and that Nigerians have gas,” said Ekpo.
Managing Director of NIPCO Plc, Mr. Suresh Kumar, recently raised the alarm that only 10 per cent of those living in rural areas have access to cooking gas.
According to Kumar, the 10 per cent rural consumption figure is in far contrast to the 90 per cent cooking gas usage in urban areas.
The NIPCO boss lamented that Nigeria has an untapped market of about 20 million households for rural commutes alone which translates to three million tons annually, adding that in rural Nigeria, an average woman spend between five to six hours per day in the kitchen in the most suffocating and unhygienic environment due to the use of traditional fuels while she spends an additional two to four hours in the collection of these fuels.
To reverse the downward consumption figure for rural areas, the NIPCO MD said rural area penetration must be improved upon.
To achieve this, he said, NIPCO plans to deploy 50 skids plants to rural communities within the next two years.