President Muhammadu Buhari will on Tuesday, December,1 unveil the Autogas scheme in Abuja, as the federal government moves to create alternative fuel for automobiles and other prime movers in Nigeria.
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that chairman of National Gas Expansion Programme (NGEP), Dr Mohammed Ibrahim made the announcement at a meeting with media stakeholders yesterday in Lagos.
Ibrahim said the autogas scheme and deepening domestic utilisation of Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG) would create about 12.5 million direct and indirect jobs for Nigerians.
He disclosed that cars in the presidential fleet had been converted to run on Premium Motor Spirit (PMS), Compressed Natural Gas (CNG) and Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG).
Ibrahim said the need to switch from PMS (petrol) to gas was necessitated by the deregulation of the downstream sector of the oil industry. by the government, which had led to increment in the pump
prices in recent times.
According to him, gas is a cheaper, safer and cleaner source of energy, hence the need to maximise its utilisation in Nigeria. Ibrahim said the Department of Petroleum Resources (DPR) had issued new guidelines that are encouraging multi-fuel models for existing filling stations, which would be available nationwide
within 30 months.
He said: “We need about 500, 000 conversion engineers in the next 90 days to ensure that the retrofitting of the vehicles goes as planned”.
“Fifty conversion centres
are currently upgrading for mass conversion and training and over 30,000 vehicles are already running on dual fuels in Nigeria.”
Ibrahim said to deepen domestic cooking gas usage, the NGEP had set up Micro Distribution Centres (MDC) nationwide to bridge the supply and accessories gap between the market and consumers.
He said the MDC scheme would create easy access of cooking gas to police and paramilitary.
