By Christian Olise
The Lagos State Government said it plans to deliver Liquefied Petroleum Gas, LPG, also known as cooking gas to one million homes within the next four years.

The Commissioner for Energy and Mineral Resources, Mr. Toafik Tijani, also said the state government plans that 50 percent of its vehicles will run on gas, 10 percent on private vehicles and also use it to independent power project, IPP.

Speaking at a recent gas conference, the Commissioner said that Lagos state intends to partner with some major oil marketer in the deployment of small sized cooking gas cylinders, “s part of the efforts to encourage the use of the product to ensure clean and green environment.”

Reduced carbon emission

He listed the benefits of the use of LPG to include, reduced carbon emission to the environment, provision of better substituted for alternative fuels, reduced health risk, cost and stress of cooking, reduced poverty and unemployment through massive job creation, among others.

Tijani noted that the country produced 12 percent of the LPG consumed in the sub-sharia Africa but accounted for the consumption of only one percent in the West Africa sub-region.

“We have seen the Indian experience , we can adopt it to Nigeria experience I believe that without subsidy, we cannot go too far l know that countries like Malaysia were able to move quickly from the ratio of 100,000 people using LPG, to one million, within a short time, we can do that here too,” he said.

The only way will can do it, is to massively import cylinders because without the cylinders, there is no way to encourage the people to use LPG. He added although Lagos accounted for 60 percent of the LPG consumed in the country, but the demand was still low.

In his own remark, Alhaji Auwalu llu, the President of Nigeria Liquefied Petroleum Gas Association, also noted that the use LPG, releases fewer harmful pollution when use as domestic and automotive fuel sources.

He stated that the association was committed to ensure that Nigeria was part of this development through the use of LPG by more people.