The Nigerian Association of Liquefied Petroleum Gas Marketers (NALPGAM) says the Federal Government alone cannot halt the hike in the price of Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG) across Nigeria.
Mr. Bassey Essien, Executive Secretary, NALPGAM, who decried the increment in the price of LPG, also known as cooking gas in the past few months, said there was a need to put in place a policy that would encourage full domestication of LPG.
He said: “The major issue we have with gas price is that majority of what we are consuming is imported. Over one million metric tonnes of gas was consumed by Nigerians in 2020 and about 65 percent of the product was imported by marketers.
So the price of gas is affected by what is happening in the global market because though Nigeria produces about four million metric tonnes of gas annually, only 350,000MT is allocated to the domestic market.
“Unfortunately, the government cannot increase the allocation to meet our full domestic demand without the buy-in of other partners of NLNG.”
Essien said the hike in the price of cooking gas was affecting the government’s National Gas Expansion Programme, which was aimed at deepening gas utilisation in Nigeria.
He noted that some users of LPG were gradually reverting to the use of kerosene and firewood with the obvious health implications.
The price of a 12.5kg cooking gas cylinder has increased from N3,300 in December 2020 to about N5,000 at retail outlets in the past few weeks.