The Group Managing Director of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, Mele Kyari, has assured Nigerians that the corporation is working with relevant agencies to ensure that the price of gas is affordable by increasing the volume supplied to the domestic market.
Kyari gave the assurance while answering questions from journalists during his courtesy visit to the Department of Petroleum Resources headquarters in Abuja on Wednesday.
He said, “Today, this country is undersupplied with gas; we can tell you that we are having difficulty filling our network across the country with gas. So that means that once supply is weak, it will affect pricing.
“Today, the supply mechanism of LPG is very weak. So, we are collaborating extensively to ensure that we are able to extract LPG from our gas resources so that it can be made available to the market.
“To make price more affordable, we are working towards providing more volume of gas into the domestic market. By doing this, we make it very close to home and extend the networks, once supply is high, it will definitely bring down the prices.”
In his remarks, the Chief Executive Officer of DPR, Sarki Auwalu, disclosed plans to increase gas production to 230 trillion cubic feet by 2030.
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“Let me take this opportunity to inform the GMD of the NNPC that as at last year, we were able to increase the gas reserve with 3.6tcf.”
In a related development, the Abia State Field Office of the Department of Petroleum Resources has said that the current scarcity of petroleum products in the south-eastern states was not as a result of increase in the official pump price by the Federal Government.
Our reporter who monitored the scarcity of petroleum products in Umuahia, the Abia State capital on Tuesday, reports that the situation which started last weekend had seen many filling stations without the products while those who had sold at N220 for petrol.
