…CNG, LNG in focus
…fuel costs for LNG trucks 48% lower than for diesel trucks
…Vehicle conversion a snag
President Bola Tinubu is working on plans to make available cheaper fuels, through Compressed Natural Gas (CNG) and Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG), Mele Kyari, Group CEO of the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPC) has said.
This is in an effort to lower the cost of transportation for passengers, goods and services across the country, in the wake of government’s recent fuel subsidy removal, which has seen the price of petrol and diesel, shoot up.
The price of petrol increased by upwards of 200 percent.
The prices of food and other daily needs have likewise taken a hike.
Kyari, spoke of the quest for cheaper fuels on Wednesday, after a meeting with President Tinubu at State House, Abuja.
Speaking with State House correspondents after the meeting, Kyari said the Compressed Natural Gas (CNG) and Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) fuels transportation intervention project plans would be rolled out soon.
He added that the structural plan, which he described as a work in progress, was part of the President’s petroleum products subsidy removal palliative measures for citizens.
He further said there was already an ongoing rehabilitation exercise in the nation’s refineries, to be unveiled soon.
CNG and LNG are significantly cheaper than petrol and are being increasingly used across the world, to power mass transit buses, trucks and trains, as cost effective and more environment friendly fuels.
On average, fuel costs for LNG trucks are about 48 percent lower than for diesel trucks.
This might imply that government’s intervention in this direction would focus on mass transit and heavy duty vehicles.
There is a budding use of CNG and LNG in Nigeria, especially for heavy duty/mass transit vehicles and industries.
The challenge is that the vast majority of vehicles in Nigeria are petrol or diesel powered and would have to go through technical adaptations, which come at significant cost, to be able to use the said cheaper (CNG and LNG) fuels.
It was not clear as at the time of going to press, if the Federal Governments plans extend its intervention to bearing all or some of the cost of conversion of private or public commercial vehicles from petrol and diesel to CNG and LNG, or will stop at encouragement and the provision of thee cheaper fuels.
Nigeria’s transport and storage sector was valued at N2. 6trn ($6.9bn) in current basic prices in 2020, down from N3trn ($8bn) in 2019, according to the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS).
The transportation system in Nigeria is mainly dependent on the road networks.
Nigeria’s Agricultural sector maintains the largest component of the economy, contributing 25.9% to the real GDP, with an estimated value of N18. 74 trillion in 2021 and most of the produce is transported by road.
Natural gas is gaining in popularity because it burns significantly cleaner; produces lower emissions of sulfur, nitrogen and carbon dioxide into the atmosphere and lacks the strong, distinguishing diesel odor.
