The Nigeria Liquefied Natural Gas Limited, on Wednesday, announced that its annual production of Liquefied Petroleum Gas, popularly called cooking gas, has increased to over 1.5 million metric tonnes.
It also announced that the whole 1.5million tonnes production was being sold in Nigeria, adding that the company had started supplying LPG in naira, as against the usual sale of gas in the United States dollars.
Operators in the oil and power sectors have repeatedly advocated the sale of LPG or Liquefied Natural Gas in naira, especially since the crash of the local currency against the dollar.
The call for naira transactions has also been extended to the sale of crude oil. LNG and crude oil are currently sold in dollars to both international and domestic buyers.
Speaking at a panel session during the ongoing 7th Nigeria International Energy Summit in Abuja, the General Manager, Finance, NLNG Limited, Fatima Adanan, said the multi-billion dollar firm had ramped up its LPG production to 1.5 million metric tonnes and was supplying all of it to the Nigerian market.
She said the “NLNG is selling LPG in naira,” to deepen cooking gas penetration across the country.
She said, “When we started we were producing 70,000MT, today we are producing upwards of 1.5million MT of LPG and for this LPG, our sole designated distribution point is Nigeria. So part of our vision as a company is to make sure that we make Nigeria a better place.
“As a people, we are the ones to make our country better and for us, we are starting with LPG and we are campaigning to move it into the market. The 1.5million MT is our own production as at 2023.”
She, however, noted that Nigeria required a lot more and so cooking gas importation had been ongoing.
“But as NLNG we will work harder to provide more LPG in such a way that the people who are using charcoal and biomass to cook, we have a trajectory that in the next two, three years we should have at least 40 per cent penetration by changing the energy mix in Nigeria from coal, biomass to using gas, which is cleaner.
“In the long run, that will address some of the climate goals. Our intention may not be to alleviate the climate goals, rather to make Nigeria better. But in doing that we are going to also impact the climate goals which is important,” Adanan stated.
