The Federal Government has revealed that it is creating micro-distribution centres where users of cooking gas would obtain the commodity at affordable rates and rent cylinders.
It also disclosed that the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation and other oil marketers would start installing Compressed Natural Gas pumps at filling stations in order to make Nigerians shift from the use of petrol to the CNG in automobiles.
The Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, Timipre Sylva, made the disclosure in Abuja.
Sylva said the government was trying to lead Nigerians from the use of kerosene to cooking gas, which was the major reason why it had started rolling out measures to achieve this target.
He said, “Today the reason why people cannot really use gas or why the penetration is low is because the initial capital outlay in using gas is quite high to the ordinary man.
“So what we are doing is to try and see how people can have access without necessarily investing all that money upfront.”
He added, “With this, we believe that gas will now begin to compete with other cooking fuels because today the advantage that kerosene has over gas is that if you don’t have the money to buy a litre of kerosene, you can buy a bottle or half a bottle.
“But when we roll out this programme, gas will become more affordable and we believe that a lot more people will use gas.”
He further noted that in the LPG policy of the government, the plan was to set up 32,000 micro-distribution centres cooking gas across the country, which would see the engagement of 5,000 workers.
Sylva said the government was seriously pushing for the use of the CNG in cars instead of the continued use of petrol.
