Cooking gas scarcity to persist as NLNG vessel fails to discharge in Lagos

Respite is yet to come the way of users of  Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG), otherwise called cooking gas, as the vessel that conveyed the product from Bonny Island to Lagos could not berth.

The scarcity of the product is one of the consequences of the recent  blockade of the facilities of the Nigeria Liquefied Natural Gas Limited (NLNG) by the Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency (NIMASA).

NLNG vessel, MT Providence, which arrived Lagos on Monday,  could not discharge cooking gas, due to lack of space for the vessel to berth at the North Oil Jetty (NOJ) belonging to the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC).

NOJ is one of the NNPC's three jetties used by vessels to discharge petroleum products in Lagos. The two other jetties, it was learnt, are the Bulk Oil Jetty and the Petroleum Wharf.

Reports indicate that the situation arose because  the NOJ, which is used to discharge cooking gas to marketers,  was at the time of arrival of the NLNG vessel, being used by another vessel.

AS at the time of this report,  efforts were being made to divert the vessel to another jetty belonging to NAVGAS in Apapa to discharge the product.

Since 2007 when the refineries failed to produce LPG for the domestic market, the NLNG Limited has been making available 150,000 Metric Tonnes of LPG yearly for domestic use, even though local consumption is still far below this quantity.