Cooking Gas: Ekpo Wades In To Ease Supply, Crash Prices

As the price of Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG) continues to escalate beyond the reach of the masses, the minister of state, Petroleum Resources (Gas), Ekperikpe Ekpo has constituted a committee with a mandate to come up with recommendations on how to boost supplies and crash LPG prices.

The committee headed by the chief executive, Nigerian Midstream Downstream Petroleum Regulatory Authority (NMDPRA), Farouk Ahmed has one week to come up with solutions.

The gas minister constituted the committee at the end of a meeting to wade into the challenges bordering on the supply and pricing of the commodity in the country’s domestic market.

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This intervention follows the persistent rise  in the price of LPG (better known as cooking gas) in recent months from about N700 to above N1,000 per kilogramme in some parts of the country.

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Key challenges identified as responsible for LPG price increase include FX sourcing for imports and insufficient supply to the domestic market by producers

The meeting, at the instance of the minister, was held in Abuja recently and had in attendance top officials of Chevron Nigeria Limited led by Sansay Narasimi; NMDPRA led by its chief executive officer, Farouk Ahmed and the NNPC.

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 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.