…commences conversion of airport taxis as 20 federal universities benefit
The Presidential Compressed Natural Gas Initiative (PCNGi) says it has set a $1.2 billion investment target by the end of December, 2025, with $491 million investments already attracted.
Michael Oluwagbemi, the Programme Director of Presidential CNG Initiative, stated this while briefing State House Journalists in Abuja on n Monday.
Oluwagbemi, who stated that the PCNG is working to drive investments into clean and affordable energy, announced plans to start conversion of airport taxis, as part of efforts to bring down public transportation in Nigeria.
He said, “We’ve set a goal of about a billion dollars of investment for ourselves this year. I think we have made appreciable progress towards achieving that. If I just take the 100 additional NNPC investments in data stations, that’s close to $50 million and the 27 million dollars are rated.
“ We are already close to $100 million in the last one month alone, right? So we continue to see increasing investment in the sector. So if I’m doing about 100 million a month, I will be close to $1.2 billion by the end of the year.”
He expressed confidence that he would hit the $1 billion goal, monthly, adding; “We also have 150 refueling stations.
“We have a goal of having 500 conversion centers set up this year, to have a total of 500 conversion centers at the end of the year, meaning additional 300 are supposed to be set up this year. So that will increase our conversion capacity from about 65,000 a year currently, to about 250 to 300,000 a year at the end of this year. So it will also be a significant boost for conversions”.
Read also: FG invests over $450 million in CNG – PCNGi
President Bola Tinubu has established the PCNGI to facilitate the adoption of natural gas and other alternative fueled vehicles including electric vehicles (EVs), in the light of the removal of fuel subsidy that led to a spike of transportation costs at the onset of the policy as the President sought to rescue the nation.
Also as part of efforts to reduce cost of public transportation, the Federal Executive Council FEC, recently approved and directed all Ministries, Departments and Agencies MDAs, to convert Federal Government vehicles
Part of the core mandate of the PCNGI, is to incentivise CNG (and EV) for its adoption as an alternative to expensive, dirty and less-safe petrol and diesel, while facilitating investments to enable its distribution and manufacturing of components and promoting regulation to drive its growth and value creation.
“With respect to our gas availability strategy, let me use this opportunity to commend the NNPCL through the Nigeria Gas Marketing Limited, Gas Aggregation Company of Nigeria and Nigeria Midstream Downstream Regulatory Authority for working together to make the Mobility CNG Gas Supply Market a reality by signing off on the Mobility CNG Framework for Upstream and Downstream, which will immediately unlock 100 mmsfd/day for Auto CNG at the preferential price approved by the NMDPRA.
“This market is billed to go live in 2-4 weeks, and will ensure every car needing CNG can get it at the preferential price approved by Mr. President while eliminating arbitrage leakages.
“We have attracted over $491 million of investments in the past year to AutoNG and we are very proud of it. This has created over 9,000 direct and 75,000 indirect jobs. Oluwagbemi said the PCNGI is also doing a demand stimulation drive that will increase patronage of natural gas use with the CNG.
“As you will all agree with us, the PCNGI has been one of the central initiatives of Mr. President to not only lower the cost of living for Nigerians, but to create jobs and opportunities via investments and to improve productivity by enhancing connectivity leveraging Nigeria’s competitive advantage in gas for economic development”, he added.
The initiative also has a consequential impact on reducing the cost of governance for key Government Agencies that adopt compress natural gas for transportation and logistics, while enhancing government revenue by increasing domestic utilization of gas for Nigeria instead of flaring it. Gas means dollars in our coffers.
He disclosed that Nigeria’s conversion capacity of vehicles from pure petrol and diesel to biofuel vehicles was raised by almost 3.000% with more than 200 new conversion centers established, from just mere seven that existed in Nigeria when the programme started, by the private sector – while directly employing over 3,000 new technicians occasioned by the launch of the Conversion Incentive Program.
The Federal Government had estimated that about 22,000 conversion kits to be procured and delivered in October 2024 to the program by the Ministry of Finance.
“Already, we are on course for 10,000 conversions by the end of this quarter under this program having started in December, 2024. More recently, that programme has been expanded by the PCNGi to enable deep discounts for public servants and finance the balance of costs for converting their vehicles working with another major initiative of Mr. President i.e. the Credit Corp. We will soon launch that initiative with the public sector unions.
“421 CNG Buses and 36 EV buses have been delivered so far, the program has deployed 405 buses either as part of the settlement of terms with the NLC and TUC as part of the wage negotiations, or to the transport unions being run commercially in partnership with the Federal Ministry of Transportation or through the partnership with state transport companies that was launched last year”, he noted.
He revealed that aside from the success achieved in penetration via a capacity development cum infrastructure deepening strategy, the PCNGI was also cooperating closely with the Federal Ministry of Education and the Midstream Downstream Gas Infrastructure Fund (MDGIF) of the NMDPRA.
“Through this cooperation we are committed to gasifying our academic communities starting first with 20 Federal Universities, to ensure discounted conversion for staff and members of these universities and surrounding institutions” for affordable CNG transportation on buses and tricycles to be operated by PCNGI private sector.
“Integrating CNG transportation in our universities will not only ease cost of living for our students, teachers and support staffers but also enable training and capacity building as these sites will host conversion centers and training programs that will be accredited in the planned TVET initiative of the Federal Ministry of Education set to launch soon. Of course, the gas refueling infrastructure to be rolled out in these universities will also fill the last mile infrastructure gap.
“We trained over 1,500 technicians last year, and are on track for another 5,000 this year. This will ensure that Nigeria’s CNG sector is underpinned by strong local content and capacity. Active training and collaboration with national institutions like the Nigeria Army and Police is also ongoing, as well as institutions like NITT, NADDC, SMEDAN and NASENI”, he submitted.
Speaking on safety mechanisms, Oluwagbemi stated that the SOLE safety incident that occurred in Benin last year was a result of economic saboteurs engaged in illegal fabrication of CNG cylinders and were arrested by the police. With NGVMS in place that incident will be avoided as only properly labelled & accredited vehicles with certified tanks will be refueled. The necessary steps to launch NGVMS are ongoing, and we expect it to be in place by year end.
“We won’t relent in ensuring the safety of lives and investments of participants in the sector, this was why we prioritized regulatory standards issuance from the get go in March 2024 and continue to work with these agencies especially SON & NADDC. We enjoin all participants to ensure full compliance with regulatory requirements on safety and security”, he completed.
