A committee has been set by the Federal Government (FG) with a mandate to make recommendations on how to boost domestic supplies of Liquified Petroleum Gas, LPG, known as cooking gas thereby reducing the price.
The Committee was set up by the Minister of State for Petroleum Resources (Gas) Ekperikpe Ekpo, and charged members to respond within a week.
The meeting, at the instance of the Minister was held in Abuja and had in attendance top officials of Chevron Nigeria Limited, led by Sansay Narasimi; Nigerian Midstream Downstream Petroleum Regulatory Authority (NMDPRA) led by the Authority Chief Executive(ACE) and Chief Executive Officer,Farouk Ahmed and the NNPCL.
A statement by spokesman to the Minister, Louis Ibah, said the committee is headed by the NMDPRA ACE/CEO.
The intervention became necessary as the product price continued to rise unabated in the last three months forcing scores of households to resort to alternative cooking fuel sources most of which are dirty options.
Blueprint Correspondent reports that recently the price of LPG per kg rose from about N700 to above N900 in some parts of the country and over N12,500 for a 12kg gas cylinder.
Key challenges identified as responsible for LPG price increase include FX sourcing for imports and insufficient supply to the domestic market by producers.
Ekpo expressed the concerns of President Bola Tinubu, on the price surge and the attendant hardship on majority of citizens.
qqqqqq “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.
Managing Director of NIPCO Plc, Suresh Kumar, recently raised the alarm that only 10 per cent of those living in rural areas have access to cooking gas.