Oil Minister Emmanuel Kachikwu said Friday, that the Nigerian government is working on a long-term plan to replace the use of refined oil products with LPG in a bid to further reduce fuel imports, which have become a drain on the country’s dwindling foreign exchange earnings, Platts reports.
Speaking in a webcast, Kachikwu said that while the government has been able to stabilize fuel supplies after it cut the subsidy on imported gasoline in May 2016 that allowed marketers to sell on the domestic market at a capped price of Naira 145/liter, the country’s downstream oil sector still faced numerous challenges.
“We need to move away from white products to LPG…which is the byproduct of the gas that we have an abundance of,” said Kachikwu. “So we need to begin to look long term and how we build pipelines for LPG, so we can take LPG to the closest points for cars to reduce [gasoline]consumption.”
