Despite NLNG ‘Supply Increase’, Cooking Gas Price Soars, Scarcity Looms

Despite the Nigeria Liquified Natural Gas (NLNG) Limited confirmation that it supplies 1.5 million metric tons of LPG to the Nigerian domestic market, many users of Liquified Petroleum Gas (LPG), also called cooking gas, are finding it hard to get the product in Lagos at a cheap rate.

Naija News understands that cooking gas has soared to as much as ₦1,300 per kilogram.

NLNG has clarified that it annually provides close to 500,000 metric tons of Liquified Petroleum Gas (LPG) to meet market demands in pursuit of its commitment to deliver 100 percent of its LPG production to the domestic market, a decision made by the company’s board of Directors in 2022.

However, Leadership Newspaper reports that the commodity’s price further escalated as most outlets on Friday in Lagos ran out of supply.

This has led to long queues at refilling plants, with most Nigerian National Petroleum Company (NNPCL) retail outlets running dry.

Some marketers like TotalEnergies, where a few outlets sold to customers, sold at ₦1,300 per 1kg.

Customers were forced to buy limited quantities as they didn’t envisage a sudden arbitrary increase.

NLNG disclosed that it supplied 493,000 metric tons of LPG to the domestic market in 2023. In the preceding years, NLNG delivered 498,000 metric tons in 2022 and 399,000 in 2021.

It currently caters to 30 percent of the total LPG demand in the country, which is currently estimated to be about 1.5 million metric tons.