The Nigerian Bureau of Statistics (NBS), in its newly-released data, revealed that on a year-on-year basis, the price of refilling a 12.5kg cylinder of cooking gas, has risen up to 122% from N4,422 in July 2021.
According to the NBS, Ebonyi State recorded the highest average retail price for refilling a 12.5kg cylinder with N11,212, followed by Delta with N10,926 and Ekiti with N10,883. Conversely, the lowest average price was recorded in Katsina with N8,355, followed by Yobe and Kano with N8,383 and N8,614 respectively.
The data, however, further revealed that the Southwest region of the country recorded the highest average retail price with N10,334, followed by the Southsouth with N10,239, while the North-East recorded the lowest price with N9,139. BizWatch Nigeria understands that all the prices are peculiar to the 12.5kg cylinder size.
Why cooking gas prices continue to soar
Although, while the Federal Government (FG) had released a N250 billion intervention fund, it had as well come up with what it called a ‘Decade of Gas’ policy, with a view to utilising its vast resources, conserving energy, and reducing heavy dependence on other countries.
This publication understands that nearly 50%t of the over 624,000 metric tones (MT) that Nigerians consumed from January to June 2022, were imported.
However, 312,752.24MT, representing 50.1% of the domestic market supply, was obtained locally from the Nigeria Liquefied Natural Gas (NLNG) in Bonny, Rivers State, and BRT LNG.
With Nigeria importing most of the gas it consumed, the rising price of crude oil and its derivatives at the world market, which was as a result of Russian invasion of Ukraine, according to industry stakeholders, have influenced the soaring cooking gas prices.
