Subsidy removal: Oil marketers seek gas investment, pledge 100 mass transit CNG buses

The Depot and Petroleum Marketers Association of Nigeria (DAPPMAN) has called for increased gas investments to provide an alternative to petrol use.

Winifred Akpani, chairman of DAPPMAN, spoke on Wednesday in Abuja after a meeting with President Bola Tinubu.

Akpani, who doubles as managing director (MD) and chief executive officer (CEO) of Northwest Petroleum and Gas Company Limited, was part of a delegation of oil marketers that visited the president.

She said the meeting was to discuss the best course of action in the post-subsidy regime, and “to express our support and to see how we can cooperate with the government”.

Akpani said the oil marketers are proactive and at the forefront of mitigating the effects of the removal of the petrol subsidy.

“We have made suggestions today on how we can really move this forward. What we came up with is that, over time, we have all depended on PMS because it was cheap,” she said.

“We didn’t develop our gas. There’s electricity. So, we’ll have alternate sources of energy. It doesn’t have to be PMS.

“Now suddenly, we realise that we have gas in abundance. There was no fresh investment. Nobody’s going to invest in an economy that is not free. You’re going to have restrictions.”

“By July, we’re going to begin to see what is being put in place to help, and to make sure that people can go back to seamless living”.

OIL MARKETERS PLEDGE MASS TRANSIT CNG BUSES

Akpani said the oil marketers have also agreed to donate 100 compressed natural gas (CNG) buses to help mitigate the effects of petrol subsidy removal.

This, she said, is to support the federal government’s post-subsidy palliative measures.

“We collectively agreed that we’re going to work at providing real mass transit buses that work. The ones that run on CNG, which is a compressed natural gas and diesel interchangeably, and hopefully, we are going to start with about 50 to 100,” the DAPPMAN chair said.

“And that is in the very short term. And these are locally produced, so you see that we’re also providing jobs, a lot more jobs because we are using local assembly plants, we are not importing this.

“That is less pressure on our foreign exchange, and that’s more jobs for Nigerians. And Mr. President was very happy with that.”