Cooking Gas Operators Call for Reduction In Price

Operators in the Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG) market, otherwise called cooking gas, have called for the domestication of the price of the product, saying as a Nigerian product, the price of the product in the country should be less than the price at the international market.

National President of the Nigerian Association of Liquefied Petroleum Marketers (NALPGAM), Mr. Basil Ogbuanu said that a situation whereby the price of cooking gas in Nigeria is tied to the price at the international market has led to a high cost of the product in the country.

"We want a domestic price because this is a Nigerian product. It is produced in Nigeria. In Dubai, the price of 12.5kg cylinder is equivalent of N150 because they produce it. But in Nigeria, it is N3, 000. The 20 metric tonnes that sell for N3.3 million today was just N70,000 in 1994 when we were buying from the refineries. In 1998, it was N150, 000 but in 2004/2005, it went up to N1.2million. It was in late 2007 that it increased to over N2 million. Let us have domestic pricing. Let us have Nigerian price as in Dubai," he explained.

Ogbuanu said with the intervention of the Nigeria Liquefied Natural Gas (NLNG) Limited in the supply of LPG to the domestic market, the product would continue to be readily available in the market.

He stated that for the past three months, the price of 20metric tonnes LPG has stabilized between N3.2million and N3.35million.

Ogbuanu, however, pointed out that before the Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency (NIMASA)'s blockade against the NLNG, the price was below N3.2 million.

Nigeria's population of 160million is supposed to be consuming over one million metric tonnes of Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG) yearly but the country's domestic consumption is less than 200,000mt, apparently due to lack of awareness. For instance, Algeria with a population of about 20million consumes five times Nigeria's yearly domestic consumption.

However, there has been a steady increase in the yearly consumption since the past three years, according to statistics by NALGPAM.

About five years ago, the country was consuming less than 70,000metric tonnes yearly but by 2011 the figure grew to almost 100,000metric tonnes and above 150,000mt by 2014.

Following the acute scarcity of LPG, which hit the country in 2007, former President Olusegun Obasanjo had directed the NLNG to set aside a certain volume of its output for the domestic market.

In 2007, NLNG made available 150,000 metric tonnes for the domestic market, but after domestic consumption exceeded 150, 000mt in 2013, the NLNG increased supply to 250,000metric tonnes.