Daily Independent (Lagos)
Adetutu Folasade-Koyi
1 July 2009
Abuja — Senate Committee on Gas has raised an alarm over the continued sale and use of expired cooking gas cylinders in the country.
The Senator Osita Izunaso-led committee has also said it would convene a national Gas Stakeholders Summit, in collaboration with the stakeholders in the industry to dialogue on the low level use of gas in Nigeria
Briefing newsmen about the committee's activities in Abuja on Thursday, Izunaso noted that it is embarrassing for Nigeria to experience low usage of gas while Ghana, which buys the product from Nigeria is at optimal usage.
"I am not sure that most of you know that cylinders have expiry dates? Most of them have expired and we are still using them in our various homes because nobody has brought this to our attention.
"So, we are going to go into the summit when we come back from break, bring all the major stakeholders in oil and gas, particularly in LPG to sit down with us and dialogue".
"It is going to be a national dialogue on LPG utilisation in our country. Our target is to ensure that by 2010 this country will be able to consume at least a minimum of 1 million metric tonnes of gas."
He continues: "One issue that this committee will address in the next legislative session is the issue of LPG, Liquefied Petroleum Gas- it is very embarrassing that a country that has over 187 trillion cubic feet of gas that we don't have gas in our various houses to eat.
"We are thinking that there should be a revolution in this field and based on this, the Senate committee on Gas is putting together a national summit on Liquefied Petroleum Gas otherwise known as cooking gas.
"This summit would be convened once we resume from our break. We are going to bring all the stakeholders to know what the impediments are.
"In fact, it will be shocking for you to hear that LNG gave just 150 metric tones of gas to the uptakers up till today as we are talking since 2008, only 150,000 tones of gas, up till today as we talk we have not been able to utilize up to 60,000.
"What is the problem? I am sure that you may be worried to hear that a country with over 150 million people that we have less than 1 million cooking cylinders in Nigeria. What is the problem?
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