Executive director of popular oil and gas retail outlet, Rainoil Limited, Emmanuel Omuojine, has said the Nigeria’s gross domestic product (GDP) could add up to $1 billion annually if flared gas is optimized, and considerable LPG penetration is achieved in the country.
He listed a number of factors militating against full achievement of LPG penetration, including sub-optimal infrastructure; poor roads for transportation, significant gas processing infrastructure deficit and obsolete pipelines as some of the problems besetting the sector.
Others are berthing facilities and domestic equipment manufacturing, foreign exchange for import of LPG and related equipment as well as regulatory and policy frameworks as barriers to LPG penetration in the country.
The Rainoil boss was among other stakeholders at the 2nd Annual Virtual LPG workshop organised by the African Refiners and Distributors Association (ARDA), the Rainoil boss who maintained that massive funding is necessary for gas infrastructure totransform the economy.
Mr. Omuojine explained that Nigeria requires about $750 million investment in LPG transport and retailing infrastructure across the country to achieve the target of 5 million metric tonnes annual consumption.
According to him, by investing in gas adoption and utilisation, an estimate of over $27 million per year would be generated by switching 50% of kerosene and firewood users to LPG.
He called for an effective public enlightenment and sensitization advocacy on health and cost benefits to drive penetration while enforcing effective penalties for emissions as well as rewarding global warming reductions.
The executive secretary of ARDA, Anibor Kragha, said in his remarks at the event, said that LPG remains the fastest-growing petroleum product in Sub- Saharan Africa, yet the per capita consumption in the region is however the lowest in the world.
He opined that although Sub-Saharan Africa accounted for 14.4% of world’s population, it has less than 1% of global LPG consumption, listing finance and infrastructure as key to growing the sector.
Another speaker, the acting director, research, monitoring & evaluation at Ghana’s National Petroleum Authority (GNPA), Joseph Wilson, said that LPG has been exceptionally placed to act as a “bridging fuel” which would minimize environmental impacts.
Kragha explained that this will satisfy energy needs, where over 850 million on the continent still rely on tradition biomass for cooking. According to him, the adoption of LPG remains a key means for the reduction of over 500,000 premature deaths in Sub-Saharan Africa due to indoor air pollution.
He stressed that the hazards of fossil fuel pollution comes even as technological solutions that currently exist to deal with indoor air pollution are hardly affordable.
“Private sector involvement in clean cooking remains highly fragmented, because a majority of clean cooking companies are small scale and face difficulties in accessing adequate funding. Business can take advantage of Clean Cooking Fund to help address these problems by providing result-based finance, grants and technical assistance to organisations that offer innovative solutions to accelerating deployment of clean cooking solutions,” he said.
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