Minister of State Petroleum Resources (Gas), Ekperikpe Ekpo, has waded into the challenges bordering on the supply and pricing of Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG), also known as cooking gas, in the Nigerian domestic market.
The intervention follows the rise in recent months in the price of LPG per kg from about N700 to above N900 in some parts of the country.
Key challenges identified as responsible for LPG price increase include FX sourcing for imports and insufficient supply to the domestic market by producers.
The minister’s spokesman, Louis Ibah, who disclosed this in a statement on Sunday, November 26, said the meeting for the intervention at the instance of the minister, was held at the NNPC Towers Abuja recently.
According to him, it had in attendance top officials of Chevron Nigeria Limited led by Sansay Narasimi; Nigerian Midstream Downstream Petroleum Regulatory Authority (NMDPRA) led by its Chief Executive Officer, Farouk Ahmed and the NNPCL.
Ekpo expressed the concerns of President Bola Tinubu over the astronomical increase in the price of cooking gas and the attendant hardship on the majority of citizens.
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 huge volumes to the domestic market was unacceptable and should be discouraged.
Ekpo said: “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, and the demand for LPG will increase as we approach December…you have a public service obligation to collaborate with the government to ensure the security of gas supply, we need to therefore bend backward and find solutions, to ensure that we have sufficient supply and stability in-country and that Nigerians have gas.”
The gas minister thereafter constituted a committee headed by the ACE of NMDPRA with a mandate to come up with recommendations on how to boost supplies and crash LPG prices within a week.
