Former
president Olusegun Obasanjo said he had conceived the idea of vehicles
in Nigeria running on natural gas during his time as Nigeria’s leader.
Obasanjo said his intention was to
develop the nation’s natural gas for vehicles and reduce dependence on
imported petrol. He added that he issued out licences to companies in a
bid to achieve this objective.
Had the plan been adhered to by
successive administrations, Obasanjo said, 50 per cent of the vehicles
in the country would have been running on gas by now.
According to Punch newspaper, the former
President stated this during a courtesy visit by the management of
Nipco Plc to him at his Presidential Hilltop residence in Abeokuta, Ogun
State.
Per Punch:
In 2006, the Obasanjo administration
gave out licences to three companies, Nipco Plc, Contact Global and
Global Steel, for the development of Compressed Natural Gas for
vehicles.
But it was gathered that only Nipco,
which later went into a partnership with the Nigeria Gas Company to
form Green Gas Limited, had invested significantly in the project since
then.
While reacting to comments by the
Managing Director, Nipco, Mr. Venkataraman Venkatapathy, Obasanjo said,
“When I gave the licence in my time, the idea was to use what we had and
by now, we could have put half of all the vehicles on gas.”
Venkatapathy had earlier said the
replacement of petrol by the CNG would save Nigeria the much-needed
foreign exchange on importation of petrol.
He said, “The CNG is a superior auto
fuel alternative to liquid fuels mainly petrol and diesel, specifically
for countries like Nigeria, which is blessed with abundant (over 186
trillion cubic feet) availability of natural gas that remains untapped.
“To replace 20 per cent of the
current petrol consumption of Nigeria, natural gas required is less than
five per cent of the total domestic gas consumed currently and less
than one per cent of the current gas production. Foreign exchange saved
will be close to $2bn.”
According to him, in Benin City, Edo
State, over 4,000 vehicles run on the CNG which resulted in replacing
20 million litres of petrol from 2012 to 2015 and forex savings of over
$9m.
He said Green Gas had developed
nine operational CNG stations, with three stations under completion and
five under construction.
A former Special Assistant on
Petroleum Resources to President Obasanjo, Dr. Muhammed Ibrahim, who was
on the Nipco team, said, “I was one of the team members when President
Obasanjo was in office in 2006 that initiated the full concept of
development of gas for vehicles and other applications in the country.
It was during his regime that President Obasanjo awarded three licences
to three companies to invest in the promotion and diffusion of
Compressed Natural Gas for vehicular application in the country.
“But because of the
capital-intensive and high-tech nature of the project, only one company
today after 10 years has invested millions of dollars in the project
such that the entire Benin City is encircled with a network of gas
pipelines with about seven CNG gas stations providing the CNG to more
than 4,000 vehicles.
He said the company had constructed the largest CNG station on the African continent in Ibafo, Ogun State.
credit: omojuwa
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