Shittu Oluwadamilola – Abuja
The Federal Government has ordered the chief executive officers and their lieutenants in agencies under the Federal Ministry of Petroleum Resources to convert all their official vehicles to run on autogas.
It was gathered on Tuesday that the Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, Chief Timipre Sylva, who gave the directive in Abuja, had already submitted all his vehicles to be converted to run on gas, as opposed to petrol.
The minister said the conversation of vehicles in his ministry and agencies to run on auto gas was to demonstrate to Nigerians that the government was serious with its declaration of 2020 as “the year of gas.”
Sylva disclosed this in his address at the Ministerial Mandate Performance Scorecard Review session of the Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, permanent secretary and CEOs of agencies under the petroleum ministry.
Since 2019, the Federal Government has been pushing for the usage of Compressed Natural Gas and Liquified Petroleum Gas in automobiles to utilise Nigeria’s abundant gas reserves.
In his address at the session, which was made available to our correspondent by officials of the ministry on Tuesday, Sylva said, “I have surrendered my vehicles to the NGEP (National Gas Expansion Programme) to convert all to dual fuel with use of either auto-LPG or auto-CNG.
“And on that premise, I now have the moral backing to direct that all CEOs and their able lieutenants do same by converting all their official vehicles to run on autogas as a demonstration to the Nigerian people that indeed government meant it when we declared this year ‘the year of gas’.”
At the event, the Chairman, NGEP, Mohammed Ibrahim, who was represented by the minister’s Technical Adviser on Gas Business and Policy Implementation, Justice Derefaka, explained that the use of gas in automobiles would reduce energy poverty in Nigeria.
Derefaka, who is also the Programme Manager, Nigerian Gas Flare Commercialisation Programme, and Programme Manager, Autogas, NGEP, said the use of autogas would reduce pollution and the damaging environmental effect of carbon from petrol.
According to him, the NGEP was putting in place infrastructure to allow continuous availability of LPG and autogas, adding that it was working to ensure the affordability of gas to both urban and rural users.
He said the objective of the team was to position LPG as an alternative for the eventual replacement of firewood and kerosene as domestic cooking fuel, adding that the NGEP was also canvassing the use of autogas in vehicles nationwide.
