The Nigerian Association of Liquefied Petroleum Gas Marketers has condemned Nigeria’s importation of Liquefied Natural Gas when the country has abundance of it.
NALPGAM particularly faulted the Nigerian Liquefied Natural Gas Limited for allegedly exporting about 70 per cent of gas it produces, leaving Nigerian consumers with only 30 per cent.
The gas marketers also condemned landlords who prevent tenants from using gas to cook.
The association, therefore, wrote to the House of Representatives Committee on Petroleum (Downstream), asking the lawmakers to address the various issues bordering on gas production, marketing and consumption in the country.
The President of NALPGAM, Mr Nosakhare Ogieva-Okunbor, who led the governing council of the association to present the paper to the Deputy Chairman of the committee, Mr Alex Egbona, recalled that before a deliberate policy by the Federal Government in 2007, consumption of LPG was abysmally low at about 60,000 metric tonnes.
“In the LPG industry across the globe, it is a shame that with what we have (petroleum resources), we are so low in LPG per capita consumption; that was pre-2007,” he said.
According to him, the Nigerian LPG market now has between 900,000 to one million metric tonnes. He added that the increase in gas use had helped in addressing some environmental issues, including indoor population that has killed many people.
The NALPGAM leader said, “When we discovered that the penetration is not coming up well, our association came up with a programme that gives out free cylinders to Nigerians. So far in this country, we have given out about 7,000 cylinders for free in educating and creating awareness on using LPG in our country.
“This does not come without challenges. We have challenges and that is why we are here. Some of the challenges we are having is we, as Nigerians, are blessed with a lot of gas. Funny enough, we are still doing importation of gas. This affects our foreign exchange reserve. We have sourced our jobs to other people and with this, the supply from NLNG is being squeezed to a point that if care is not taken, Nigerians will not get the benefits of NLNG. Importation of gas should be secondary. We should see that we are using our gas.
“We are presenting a paper to you that we should not allow the NLNG product to die; that stakeholders in the industry should be brought to the table; that the reverse should be the case – the imported gas should be supplementary to what we have.”
