Gabriel Aduda, permanent secretary, ministry of petroleum resources has revealed that over 1000 cars have been converted to gas under the country’s autogas project.
Aduda said this while speaking to journalists as the sixth Nigeria International Energy Summit ended in Abuja.
“Edo State government partnered with the NGEP and they have converted one to two pumps across all the stations to auto gas, as at the last time I checked, over a thousand cars had been converted and they are government vehicles,” he said.
He also mentioned that some filing stations in Abuja like Nipco located on airport road also have gas pumps, in addition he said about 12 buses provided by the civil service commission to convey civil servants run solely on autogas and they have never been grounded.
Aduda reiterated that the government expressed readiness to partner with them in advancing the domestic utilisation goal.
He also revealed that discussions are ongoing with investors to see how they can partner with filing stations in Nigeria regarding the project.
“They want to start with a minimum of 500 stations and see how they can apportion one or two pumps for conversion to autogas so I think we are catching up,” he said.
Launched in December 2020, the national autogas initiative is aimed at reducing the country’s high reliance on petrol and promoting the use of gas as a cleaner fuel for vehicles.
Speaking on subsidy removal, he said the government is still looking for the beast way to remove subsidy without disrupting the ecosystem of livelihood in Nigeria
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“That is our responsibility as government, we have to ensure buffers are in place, we have to make sure FX is made available for those that will do imports; we have to ensure that there is some form of incentive where necessary; we also have to ensure supply Is available for a minimum of six months to ensure that when we finally do that the disruptions will be minimal,” he said.
Speaking on the feedback from the conference, he said bottlenecks have been identified, such as double taxation as well as other recommendations which the government has noted and will address.
Aduda affirmed that the oil and gas industry will be better because of the NIES 2023, adding that by the seventh edition in 2024, things would have been achieved from the points raised during the recently concluded conference.
Simbi Wabote, Executive Secretary of the Nigerian Content Development & Monitoring Board, (NCDMB), said under the Board’s 10 year strategic plan, one of the pillars of the roadmap required establishment of industrial parks which we have started Before the end of this year two of those industrial parks will be commissioned
He said there are already requests from companies who wish to establish manufacturing hubs for solar panels there and also those asking to develop manufactureing capacity on renewable energy sources.
