The Federal Government has set up plans to expand access to Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG), also known as cooking gas to rural dwellers, the Group Managing Director, Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, Mr Mele Kyari has said.
Kyari spoke on Wednesday at the virtual Atlantic Council’s Global Energy Forum.
This is coming as the Petroleum Products Pricing Regulatory Agency on Tuesday announced that Nigeria’s domestic consumption of LPG exceeded one million Metric Tonnes (MT) in 2020.
According to the available statistics, Nigeria consumed 840,594.37MT of LPG in 2019, indicating an increase of 60.5 per cent over the 635,452.061MT recorded in 2018.
The PPPRA stated that made 2020 the first year in the nation’s history where LPG consumption had reached the one million MT threshold.
The agency noted that the steady and sustained pattern of growth culminating in the over one million metric tonnes of LPG domestic consumption milestone in 2020 has placed the country first in West Africa and one of the leading LPG consuming nations on the continent.
Kyari 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.”
The NNPC boss further stated that the Federal Government is making conscious efforts aimed at deepening domestic gas consumption through the use of Compressed Natural Gas (CNG) and LPG.
He enumerated FG’s moves included 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.