Fuel price hike: Expert urges Nigerian Government to licence over 10,000 LPG skid tanks nationwide to drive adoption of gas-powered vehicles
Oredola Adeola
Oluwasegun Olajuwan, Group Managing Director of THLD Group, has called on the Nigerian Midstream and Downstream Petroleum Regulatory Authority (NMDPRA) to offer licence to over 10,000 Liquified Petroleum Gas(LPG) skid tank owners spread across Nigeria as autogas stations to dispense gas to LPG/CNG vehicles.
Olajuwon made this known in a statement obtained by EnergyDay on Sunday, while highlighting the business potentials that have been unlocked as a result of the removal of the petrol subsidy and full deregulations of the downstream sector.
THLD, is an International Logistics Ltd with a special focus on LPG / CNG trucks.
According to him most of the unlicensed gas skid owners across Nigeria can be engaged by the NMDPRA as licenced Autogas stations, insisting that that the gas vehicles have capacity to save motorists 45 percent of efficiency using petrol.
He said, “The Government needs to engage LPG skid station owners and offer them automatic licenses for autogas to sell to cars powered by LPG.
“Current price for LPG is about N300 per litre which means it’s about N200 cheaper than petrol and with a minimum requirement of 1.1 ltrs to 1 ltrs of petrol vehicles powered by LPG will be saving around N175 per litre, once they are running on LPG compared to petrol.
“With an initial investment of converting your car to run on LPG which can be recovered in less than six months, a car owner will be having a significant savings running on LPG in Nigeria and with a cleaner fuel.
“LPG price is expected to drop even more with more players coming into the sub-sector.
“With more supply from Nigeria LNG Limited and KWALE hydrocarbon, we can even see more reduction in price if either pure propane is used compared to the propane/butane mix.
“We belief that the time for gas is now and skid owners can invest in the autogas gun nozzle that can be easily modified into their existing LPG plant to allow refueling for both cylinders and cars.
Olajuwan further noted that investors and other skid owners do not have to wait for the government’s intervention or support to build stations, adding that building an autogas daughter station is the cheapest infrastructural project in the natural gas industry.
He said, “Already this natural gas has been compressed and prepared from a mother station and most of these companies have already built one or two mother stations at a higher cost.
Listing some of the infrastructures that are already in place to support the short-term modeling and takeoff of the conversion process, Olajuwan said some of the approved conversion centers are Annamco, Enugu, R.T Briscoe, PAN Nigeria, Kaduna, Autoklinic, Abuja and NIPCO, Sagamu.
The GMD of THLD Group therefore stated that petrol has become too expensive for most motorists adding that funding an autogas station will translate to a quicker return on investment at this stage as a first-timer advantage to provide solutions to motorists and the upto 20-30 percent of vehicles switching to gas.
