Cooking Gas: Distributors to Own Cylinders -FG

• Cooking Gas: Distributors to Own Cylinders -FG

The Federal Government is working on a policy that will transfer ownership of Liquefied Petroleum Gas cylinders to distributors from consumers.

The idea, according to them, will deepen the use of cooking gas and help ascertain the safety of cylinder before passing it on to consumers.

Brenda Ataga, the Senior Technical Assistant to the Minister of State for Petroleum Resources on Downstream and Infrastructure, who addressed stakeholders’ forum on LPG penetration in Abuja on Tuesday said the new policy would require owners of facility “rests strictly on the dealers and distributors.”

She also stated that the government had signed an agreement with two manufacturers to deliver 600,000 cylinders to LPG distributors on credit, with a pre-payment plan period of 18 months.

“The MDCs will essentially create and introduce into the market what we call the cylinder exchange programme, whereby the cylinders are owned by the distributors,” Ataga said.

She told operators, “There is no need for you to decant for anybody that comes in, and that eliminates illegal risks as well. You would fill them at the refill plants that would be tied to you and exchange it with your customers because you know your customers already.

“Your customers pay for only the content, while you own the cylinders and control the management of those cylinders.”

Explaining the importance of the new policy, Ataga said, “It is for us to be able to, at any point in time, discern and discover cylinders that are bad, cylinders that need recertification and cylinders that need to be removed from circulation.

“We put that onus on distributors going forward, to support the safe and standard method of selling LPG. I tell you today that Nigeria is the only country in West Africa that does not practice the re-circulation model. Everyone has moved away from this because again, most of the population cannot afford cylinders; so, you have to remove that cost from them.”

She warned illegal roadside LPG dealers to immediately convert their outlets to micro distribution centres as the government would soon commence a clampdown on them.