Inter-ministerial Team inspects Techno Oil LPG cylinder plant, assures incentives
Indications have emerged on federal government’s readiness to deepen private sector investments in Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG) cylinder manufacturing.
Federal government made the revelation in Lagos when members of the Inter-ministerial Team inspected the Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG) cylinder manufacturing plant built by Techno Oil Limited in Lagos, ahead of its inauguration.
Business Hilights during the inspection gathered that the multi-billion-naira facility, which is expected to produce five million cylinders of various sizes annually, generate no fewer than 6,000 jobs and reduce dependency on fairly used but suspicious imported cylinders.
In her remarks after touring the plant, Senior Adviser, Downstream and Infrastructure to the Minister of State, Petroleum Resource, Mrs. Brenda Ataga, said that government was working out a package of incentives to encourage investors in oil and gas.
According to her, “The ministry of Petroleum Resources would set up a unit to liaise with the Federal Ministry of Finance to package tariff incentives for credible investors in the oil and gas sector.
“The ministry was doing everything possible to make Nigerians to embrace LPG so as to grow use of clean energy and save Nigerian forest resources from depletion caused by scramble for fuelwood.
Explaining more, Head, Gas Monitoring and Regulatory Division in the Department of Petroleum Resources, Mr. Sanya Bajomo, said “It is a thing of joy that we can now manufacture LPG cylinders in Nigeria, instead of importing.
“We give kudos to Techno Oil for preparing the ground for every household to adopt cooking gas.’’
In her comments, representative of the Standards Organization of Nigeria (SON), Mrs Nwaoma Olujie, commended Techno Oil for building the plant and assured that the agency would never relent in ensuring that set standards were strictly followed in the deployment of facilities.
While stressing that it has become necessary for indigenous companies to venture into manufacturing of facilities needed by Nigerians to discourage importation of fake products into the country, he observed that the feat will drive backward integration in gas cylinder production.
Earlier in her opening remarks, the Executive-Vice-Chairman of Techno Oil, Mrs. Nkechi Obi thanked the inter-ministerial team for taking off time to inspect the plant, saying “seeing is believing’’.
Obi described the feat as a product of the Local Content policy of the Federal Government, which according to her, has spurred many indigenous companies to think outside the box.
According to her, the plant was built in partnership with a firm from Europe that had built similar plants in over 15 African and Asian countries.
She averred that “Techno Oil embarked on the project as part of our contribution to the drive by the Federal Government to deepen LPG consumption.’’
She revealed that the plant which will soon be inaugurated would among other things, enable government save scarce resources, expended yearly to import LPG cylinders from Turkey, China, India and other Asian countries.
