FG to expand access to cooking gas for rural dwellers

21 Jan FG to expand access to cooking gas for rural dwellers

Mele Kyari, Group Managing Director of Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, has said the Federal Government has set up plans to expand access to Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG), also known as cooking gas, for rural dwellers. He revealed that there is at least $10 billion worth of investments currently ongoing in the energy sector in a bid to delist Nigeria from one of the most energy impoverished nations in the world.

Kyari spoke on Wednesday at the virtual Atlantic Council’s Global Energy Forum. The Petroleum Products Pricing Regulatory Agency (PPRA) on Tuesday said Nigeria’s domestic consumption of LPG exceeded one million Metric Tonnes (MT) in 2020, rising 50,000MT consumption in 2007.

He said: “Nigeria is currently witnessing increased domestic gas demand in the industrial and power sectors, leading to increased production and reduced gas flaring.

”Nigeria has also witnessed increased household access to gas networks and LPG in the main cities. There are deliberate plans to expand that access to rural areas.”

According to him, there are conscious efforts by the Federal Government aimed at deepening domestic gas consumption through the use of Compressed Natural Gas (CNG) and LPG.

He listed the efforts as including the autogas scheme, the National Gas Expansion Programme, and construction of gas networks such as Escravos Gas Pipeline System (ELPS), Obiafu-Obrikon-Oben (OB3) and Ajaokuta -Kaduna-Kano (AKK) pipelines.

Kyari said Nigeria was a gas-rich nation with proven reserves of 203TCF.

“We are not just a petroleum country, we are also a gas-rich nation. We are utilising the available resources of today to create the opportunities of tomorrow,” Kyari added. (NAN)