By Babatunde Solanke
In a bid to increase Liquefied Petroleum Gas, popularly called cooking gas volume domestically and to crash the price of the commodity, the Federal Government on Thursday, 22 February, 2024 announced the banning of the exportation of the product.
The Minister of State for Petroleum Resources (Gas), Ekperikpe Ekpo made this disclosure while speaking on the sidelines of the internal stakeholders’ workshop in Abuja on Thursday
According to Ekpo, the LPG producers in Nigeria and key stakeholders in the industry had been told to stop exporting the commodity out of Nigeria, following the recent jump in the cost of cooking gas.
Findings showed that the cost of refilling a 12.5kg cylinder of cooking gas in Abuja, Lagos, Kano and some other states had climbed to about N18,000. It was specifically N17,500 in Abuja on Thursday, a product that sold for less than N9,000 in November last year.
LPG dealers under the aegis of the Nigerian Association of Liquefied Petroleum Gas Marketers had predicted mid-last year that a 12.5kg cylinder would cost N18,000 going by the incessant hikes in its cost.
To tackle this, the Minister of State for Petroleum Resources (Gas), Ekperikpe Ekpo, constituted a committee in November 2023, headed by the Chief Executive of the Nigerian Midstream and Downstream Petroleum Regulatory Authority, Farouk Ahmed.