Going by reports, the ownership of Liquefied Petroleum Gas (cooking gas) cylinders will soon revert from the consumers to the Federal Government. This information was made know by the Senior Technical Assistant to the Minister of State for Petroleum Resources on Downstream and Infrastructure, Brenda Ataga during a stakeholders meeting in Abuja.
According to her, the Federal Government is looking at a policy, that would ensure that ownership “rests strictly on the dealers and distributors.”
She said “The MDCs will essentially create and introduce into the market what we call the cylinder exchange programme, whereby the cylinders are owned by the distributors,”
She told operators, “There is no need for you to decant for anybody that comes in, and that eliminates illegal risks as well. You would fill them at the refill plants that would be tied to you and exchange it with your customers because you know your customers already.
“Your customers pay for only the content, while you own the cylinders and control the management of those cylinders.”
According to Ataga, the reason for the policy, “is for us to be able to, at any point in time, discern and discover cylinders that are bad, cylinders that need recertification and cylinders that need to be removed from circulation.
“We put that onus on distributors going forward, to support the safe and standard method of selling LPG. I tell you today that Nigeria is the only country in West Africa that does not practice the re-circulation model. Everyone has moved away from this because again, most of the population cannot afford cylinders; so, you have to remove that cost from them.”
