Petroleum ministry officers convert official vehicles to run on autogas
The Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, Timipre Sylva, has ordered the chief executive officers and their lieutenants in agencies under the Federal Ministry of Petroleum Resources to convert all their official vehicles to run on autogas.
Sylva made this known in his address on Tuesday, August 25 at the Ministerial Mandate Performance Scorecard Review session of the Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, permanent secretary and CEOs of agencies under the petroleum ministry.
The minister informed that he had already submitted all his vehicles to be converted to run on gas, as opposed to petrol.
Sylva said the conversation of petroleum officers vehicles in his ministry and agencies to run on autogas was to demonstrate to Nigerians that the government was serious with its declaration of 2020 as “the year of gas.”
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Daily Times gathered that since 2019, the Federal Government has been pushing for the usage of Compressed Natural Gas and Liquified Petroleum Gas in automobiles to utilise Nigeria’s abundant gas reserves.
He said, “I have surrendered my vehicles to the NGEP (National Gas Expansion Programme) to convert all to dual fuel with use of either auto-LPG or auto-CNG.
“And on that premise, I now have the moral backing to direct that all CEOs and their able lieutenants do same by converting all their official vehicles to run on autogas as a demonstration to the Nigerian people that indeed government meant it when we declared this year ‘the year of gas’.”
At the event, the Chairman, NGEP, Mohammed Ibrahim, who was represented by the minister’s Technical Adviser on Gas Business and Policy Implementation, Justice Derefaka, explained that the use of gas in automobiles would reduce energy poverty in Nigeria.
Derefaka, who is also the Programme Manager, Nigerian Gas Flare Commercialisation Programme, and Programme Manager, Autogas, NGEP, said the use of autogas would reduce pollution and the damaging environmental effect of carbon from petrol.
