The Programme Manager of the National Liquefied Petroleum Gas Implementation (NLPGI), domiciled in the Office of the Vice-President, Mr. Dayo Adeshina has revealed that findings have shown that well over 90 per cent of Liquefied Petroleum Gas/cooking gas cylinders (LPG) in Nigeria are obsolete and need to be replaced with new ones built with fibres and special iron ore.
In his presentation during the recent 7th Annual LPG conference and exhibition in Lagos, he recalled that before now, industry stakeholders have been campaigning for the ban on the use of old gas cylinders, with a view to making the Federal Government revive the moribund gas cylinder factories in the country.
According to him, continued use of old cylinders is disturbing and creating fears of explosions especially in poorly controlled environments.
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He hinted that the ongoing circulation of expired gas cylinders, remain a danger even as he intoned that every cylinders outlives its safety limits after 15 years.
In his words; “We need to invest in cylinders and proudly one of the investors would have its cylinder operating plant opened in January. We also need to have cylinder re-proliferation plants.”
“We need to take care of the regulatory and fiscal policy. Enforcement needs to play a big role. There is going to be a shakeup of regulation because the government has seen that if we ever have a repeat of the incident we had in Nnewi, it is dead on arrival.
It would be recalled gas cylinder explosion few months ago caused serious damages at a gas station in Anambra State killing several people and destroying valuables.
However, some investors recently commissioned gas cylinder factor in Lagos and assured to produce enough for the country in the shortest time possible.