Techno Oil, CAKASSA Target 20 months to Complete  Nigeria’s Largest LPG Terminal

By Ejiofor Alike

Techno Oil Limited and CAKASA Nigeria Limited yesterday in Lagos signed a deal for the construction of an automated Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG), better known as cooking gas terminal to be completed in the next 20 months.

The 12,000-metric tonne capacity terminal to be financed by Access Bank Plc, will be the largest of its type in West Africa.

Speaking during the signing of the agreement for the project, the Managing Director of Techno Gas and Power, Mr. Collins Onyeama, said the facility being built at the Kirikiri coastline at Apapa, to boost LPG storage in Nigeria, would be completed in November 2018.

He said that the project would be handled by CAKASA in partnership with a leading European firm that had handled similar facilities in Nigeria and other African countries.

Onyeama said Techno Oil Group embarked on the project to boost the efforts by the federal government to increase the consumption of LPG, which is currently about 400,000 metric tonnes yearly.

He said that suitability approval for the construction of the plant had been granted by the Department of Petroleum Resources (DPR) and that necessary environmental impact assessments (EIAs) carried out.

Onyeama added that the company’s LPG cylinder manufacturing plant being built in Lagos would also be inaugurated in February 2017.

According to him, the company would commence the installation of 50 units of digital LPG skids at some filling stations next month to make more Nigerians to have easier access to LPG plants.

He argued that relevant agency of the federal government should drive the campaign to deepen the use of LPG by encouraging the switch from firewood and kerosene to cooking gas.

“This will reduce the phobia and improve public awareness that LPG is clean, safe and affordable and also expose the danger inherent in long use of firewood and kerosene,” Onyeama added.

He argued that although the use of cooking gas had increased by about 36.8 per cent in Nigeria in the past three years, over 90 per cent of households still relied on kerosene, firewood and other dangerous fossils for their energy sources.

Also speaking, the Managing Director of CAKASA, Mr. Yaro Balami, stated that his company had the capacity to build the plant.

According to him, over 80 per cent of tank farms in Nigeria were built by CAKASA in Port Harcourt, Lagos, Calabar and Oghara in Delta State.

“The capacity and the technology that Tehno Oil is deploying is the best in the country. The berthing capacity can receive 15,000 metric tonnes vessel. The channels are already being dredged. We thank Techno Oil for their belief in a Nigerian company,” he added.