Nigeria Liquefied Natural Gas (NLNG) Limited delivered only 40% of Nigeria’s liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) demand in 2022.
This is according to a press statement released on the company’s website and obtained by Nairametrics.
According to the statement, NLNG had planned to supply 100% LPG, also known as cooking gas. However, it was only able to supply 40%, representing 400, 000 tons of LPG. The 60% shortfall was then imported by marketers.
Why this is important: Nigeria is pushing for the majority of its population to adopt LPG as the major source of cooking to meet clean cooking targets under the global energy transition.
In 2020, the federal government instituted a rollout of objectives under the National Gas Expansion Programme (NGEP) targeted at the use of liquefied natural gas for cooking, compressed natural gas for automobile fuels as well as the use liquefied petroleum gas for small industrial complexes.
When it happened: In September 2021, NLNG pledged to enter into the Nigerian domestic LNG supply space from July 2022, to help bridge the perennial gas-to-power and gas-to-industry supply challenge in the country. During an annual general meeting of LPG marketers in September 2022, the managing director of NLNG, Dr Philip Mshelbila said:
- “When we made that commitment last year, the intention was that every molecule of butane and propane that we produce in our facility will come into the domestic market and since then we have made every effort to keep to that since January 2022. We have been successful in achieving a supply of 100% of our butane production.
- “We have not been able to reach 100% with propane, not because we don’t want to but because the market capacity to absorb the propane is just not there. We intend that all the butane and all the propane that we produce goes into the domestic market whether propane is being used to blend with butane as cooking gas, used as autogas, or used in industry to generate power.”
For the record: The 2022 Nigeria Multidimensional Poverty Index released by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) in November 2022, poor and vulnerable households (PVHHs) in Abia, Bayelsa, Benue, Borno, Ekiti, Enugu, and Kogi states are 100% deprived of clean cooking fuels.
- This means that all PVHHs in these states, cook their meals with dung, charcoal, and firewood.
- The report also highlights the fact that 2022, many of the households that were using LPG as of 2021, have reverted to using firewood and other dirty fuels for cooking due to affordability issues.
