Switch to gas will revive ailing, moribund industries in Kano, others – NMDPRA

The Nigerian Midstream and Downstream Petroleum Regulatory Authority (NMDPRA) has charged operators in the manufacturing and other businesses in Kano and other north-western states on the need to switch to gas as an energy source for cost-effectiveness in their operations.

Speaking in Kano during a stakeholders’ engagement on gas utilization in Nigeria, the regional coordinator of the Authority, Samuel Shuaibu, said gas as the transition fuel represents a cleaner and more cost-effective energy source.

Shuaibu said because of the challenges with the generation of electricity, most companies needed to depend on generators to power their plants and because of the deregulation of diesel, the cost of production has been increased but “bringing in gas will help them to stabilise, to bring down their cost of production so that we can compete with other products in our neighbouring countries and why you see a lot of imported products in Nigeria is because the cost of production locally is very high; but by the time we switch to gas and they can reduce the cost of production, that means these (moribund) factories will come on board and we can generate more employment for our teeming population.”

Earlier in his welcome address, Farouk Ahmed, the Authority’s Chief Executive, said one of the goals of the Authority was to encourage large consumers of petroleum products to not only operate within the regulatory space but also to become aware of the comparative advantages between the different fuels, particularly gas which has been designated as Nigeria’s transition fuel.

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Represented by Ogbugo Ukoha, the authority’s executive director for Distribution Systems, Storage and Retailing Infrastructure (DSSRI), Ahmed stressed the need for operators and businesses to take advantage of the evolving opportunities in the gas value chain for sustainable business growth.

This, he said, they can do by positioning their energy needs to embrace gas derivatives such as LNG, LPG, CNG, Autogas, propane and butane, in order to hedge against future global uncertainties to diesel supply.