NNPC Stations to Commence Sale of Autogas by December

By Adedapo Adesanya

The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) has disclosed that retailing stations operated by the state oil firm would commence the sale of the Compressed Natural Gas (CNG) for vehicles from December 2020.

This was disclosed by the Group Managing Director of the corporation, Mr Mele Kyari, who added that the deployment will be extended to independent retail stations as the NNPC plans to replicate the plants in non-NNPC owned petrol stations by the end of 2021.

“We are deploying in all our stations. Like we said, by December we will deploy it in all NNPC stations. We would have deployed it to all our retail stations.

“We are expanding and by next year, we will see this deployed in 200 to 300 stations across the country, not only NNPC stations,” the NNPC chief said.

Also speaking, the Technical Adviser on Gas Business & Policy Implementation to the Ministry of Petroleum Resources, Mr Justice Derefaka, revealed that the federal government had listed over 9,000 stations for co-location of autogas nationwide this year as part of the process of replacing preference for fossil with Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) and CNG.

According to him, the changes would affect 9,000 non-NNPC stations with 46 stations belonging to the state-owned firm co-located by fourth quarter 2020.

He explained that while about 1,000 conversion kits for trucks and smaller vehicles will be redeployed nationwide by third parties, 50 conversion centres are currently upgrading for mass conversion and training.

Mr Derefaka added that already, auto assemblers are producing fit-for-purpose dual-fuel vehicles in-country, as over 3000 vehicles are already running on dual fuels in Nigeria.

He also added that the conversation programme would create two million jobs per annum.

On government’s plan for actualising the plan next year, he said there would be 600 NNPC lease and affiliate co-locations by second quarter 2021.

This, he said, would require about one million conversion kits for trucks and smaller vehicles to be deployed, adding that one million vehicles are expected to have been running on autogas by end of 2021.