By Adewale Sanyaolu
Cooking gas prices have contnued to soar across the country despite claims by the Nigeria Liquified Natural Gas (NLNG) that it injected about 26000 metric tonnes of the product to sterm scarcity. As at the weekend the price for 12.5kg cylinder had hit an all-time high of N5200 to N6000, raising fears the injection did not provied the needed relief.
Some marketers who spoke to Daily Sun in separate interviews acknowledged the intervention of NLNG through the injection of over 36,000 metric tones, insisting that the off-takers were responsible for the hike in cooking gas prices.
Executive Secretary of the Nigerian Association of LPG Marketers (NALPGAM), Mr. Bassey Essien, told Daily Sun in a telephone interview that the injection of over 26,000 metric tones by NLNG in the last two weeks, would not eventually crash the price of cooking gas.
Essien appealed to the management of NLNG in the interest of Nigerians to work out a domestic pricing template for cooking gas as against the international pricing model currently being adopted, as such option would not in any way help to grow the domestic LPG market.
But, the General Manager, External Relations, NLNG, Mr. Kudo Eresia-Eke, last week, during an interactive session with select Energy Editors, explained that the company was already subsiding the cost of cooking gas transportation by 40 percent.
‘‘The reality of this is that although LPG is produced and consumed locally, the product like crude oil, is an internationally traded commodity with an international price benchmark, open to global demand and supply pressures.
NLNG however softens the impact of price variations by continuing to subsidise the cost of transporting the product by about 40 percent of total domestic market share which it supplies from its production facility on Bonny Island,’’ NLNG said.
Prices of cooking gas continued to soar above the reach of thousands of consumes in Nigeria amid assurances by the NLNG that it had pumped over 26,000 metric tonnes of the commodity into the market to breach the crisis caused by the huge gap in demand and supply in recent months.