Abuja, March 14, 2024 – The Nigerian Midstream and Downstream Petroleum Regulatory Authority (NMDPRA) has directed petrol stations to install Compressed Natural Gas (CNG) sale points on their premises.
Farouk Ahmed, its Chief Executive, disclosed this after a meeting with high-volume suppliers of petroleum products in Abuja on Tuesday.
“We will require that CNG add on to be put in point of the petrol stations. And the new applications will be one of the requirements that you must have a CNG add-on in your petrol station,” he said.
He appealed to partners in the industry to invest in the business to ensure that there are points of sale of CNG available to consumers.
According to him, as soon as the Authority is through with engagements and deliberations with the stakeholders for an alignment with the decision, there will be the rollout of this regulation.
“You heard what Mr. President said yesterday that all government agencies, ministries and departments are to patronize or refocus their mobility on the CNG power.
“What we are saying from NMDPRA is to make it available to the consumers, we are appealing to our partners in the industry to also invest in ensuring that that point of sale is available to the consumers.
“By so doing we are going to roll out once we finish our engagement and discussions with them, we align.”
Ahmed said the meeting also discussed the requirement for petrol stations to have trackers which monitor their consumption.
This, according to him, is to ascertain the actual national consumption volume figure in the country.
Ahmed said the industry wanted to move from simply relying on trucking figures to actual consumption volume figures.
“We also talked about our National Consumption: the requirement for petrol stations or retail outlets and the trucking industry to put some trackers that monitor the movement of the product as well as the dispensing and accounting for the volume sold or the volume transported so that we can have a very good estimate of our actual consumption.
“Because currently what we do, we rely heavily on the trucking rather on than on the actual delivery into retail outlets or other consumption areas.”
He said one of the other issues that was of concern to marketers is the ability to import petroleum products, especially diesel and Aviation Turbine Kerosene or Jet kero in the advent of the new Dangote Refinery.
Ahmed said that a commercial decision for Dangote Refinery to sell its products at any price, based on market forces, but it is also the decision of the marketers to patronize him or not.
He said the authority’s primary concern was to ensure an adequate supply of products and to bridge the supply gap. (GBN)
