FG, NNPC To Inject 20 Million Cylinders Via New Gas Company

The Nigeria National Petroleum Company Limited is collaborating with the Office of the Vice President on the establishment of Gas Funding Company Limited for the injection of 20 million cylinders in the next five years.

The Group Chief Executive Officer of NNPC Limited, Malam Mele Kyari, said this on Wednesday in Abuja at a summit.

Kyari spoke at the opening of India-Nigeria Liquefied Petroleum Gas Summit.

The NNPC Limited said the company’s establishment, which involved collaboration of other relevant stakeholders and being done under the Marketer Cylinder Owned Model, would boost Liquefied Petroleum Gas penetration.

The India-Nigeria LPG summit was hosted by the NNPC with the support of the Office of the Vice President and World LPG Association.

The summit is expected to translate into bilateral exchanges to foster mutual collaborations and opportunities for the Nigerian LPG industry to learn from India’s experience, one of the world’s most successful national LPG penetration initiatives.

The summit has its theme as: “Energising the Future: Leveraging the Indian Experience to Achieve Nigerian National LPG Aspiration.”

Kyari, represented by Adeyemi Adetunji, Group Executive Director, Downstream, NNPC, said the summit would be required to submit a report detailing gaps identified and recommendations on best practices from the Indian experience.

This, he said, would be for adoption in Nigeria by relevant stakeholders to achieve rapid National LPG penetration.

He said the summit would equally discuss the Nigerian experience and Indian example covering safe LPG handling, pricing and financial support.

According to him, this will enhance LPG affordability among the poor, communication strategies, ICT and infrastructure as well as collaboration on Cylinder management and manufacturing.

Kyari said Nigeria had identified its abundant gas resources as fuel for energy transition which informed its net zero commitments by 2060 and the declaration of 2021-2030 as Decade of Gas.

He said: “NNPC Limited is an energy company with new investments in gas, power and renewables.

“Key pipeline projects such as ELPS II, OB3 and AKK to deliver a total of 6.2 billion cubic feet of gas per day to demand nodes across the country are at various stages of completion.

“We have strong presence in the LPG value chain contributing about 45 per cent of domestic supply via JVs (Oso Bonny River Terminal) affiliates (Nigeria LNG Ltd and Ashtavinayak Hydocarbon Ltd) and subsidiaries of NPDC.

“The NNPC Limited is fully aligned with the Federal Government’s National Gas Expansion Programme (NGEP) and National LPG Expansion Plan initiatives and has a full-fledged LPG business unit established to commercially drive the National LPG penetration.

“Accordingly, NNPC Limited is commissioned to deploy 740 LPG Micro Distribution Centres (MDCs) 37 Filing Plants and Skids in its 541 stations within the next three years.”

Michael Kelly, the Chief Advocacy Officer and Deputy Managing Director, WLPGA, said the two countries had a powerful role to play in geopolitics for the rest of the century.

Kelly said the discussions would be followed up to foster the cooperation during its LPG week in Delhi in November, adding that looking at lessons learnt and grafting them into Nigerian context would be impactful.

He said the focus of the summit was to share India’s experience with the Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana (PUMY) scheme implemented by the Indian Government in May 2016.

This scheme pursued an aggressive LPG penetration drive, providing free cylinders, stoves and valves to end users.

This resulted to growth in LPG consumption in the last 10 years, with the Indian national consumption currently at 30 million MT per annum and LPG penetration from 62 per cent in 2016 to 99 per cent in 2019.

Shrikant Vadya, Chairman, Indian Oil Corporation Limited, expressed confidence that the summit would liberate the Indians to achieve Nigerian National LPG aspirations and strengthen India-Nigeria bilateral opportunities.