By Yange Ikyaa
In March 2021, President Muhammadu Buhari made a declaration, confirming the next ten years from that date as “The Decade of Gas” for Nigeria.
This initiative was designed and tailored to enable the country leverage its abundant natural gas resources and take full advantage of the global energy transition to make wealth from cleaner energy production and use. Currently, one of Nigeria’s mega energy projects is the AKK, which is an acronym for the Ajaokuta–Kaduna–Kano natural gas pipeline.
This project has a completion deadline set for 2023 and is being financed by the government of Nigeria with funds hugely derived from China’s Belt and Road Initiative.
It is hoped that, when completed, the AKK will connect the Nigerian gas market to supply demands in other lands, leveraging planned trans-regional and intercontinental pipelines, such as the Trans-Saharan Gas Pipeline, in order to access the European energy market and even beyond. Also, it is common knowledge that inadequate infrastructure has for a long time limited Nigeria’s capacity to tap from its 206 trillion cubic feet of gas reserves, but the many new gas projects that are springing up in different parts of the country could help the nation to adequately meet its growing energy needs in a cleaner and much more sustainable way.
And this is happening even in places that are not typically gas-producing regions in Nigeria. For instance, on November 25, 2021, the Nasarawa State governor, Engineer Abdullahi Sule, hosted the Nasarawa Gas Business Roundtable in Lafia, the state capital. Nasarawa is located in the North-Central region of Nigeria far away from the Niger Delta area, where oil and gas production activities are typically domiciled.
But this event, which was organized in partnership with the Gas Aggregation Company of Nigeria (GACN), and themed “Exploring Investment Opportunities in the Gas Sector,” remains a testament to the importance that the current government in Nigeria attaches to its formally declared Decade of Gas.
The Group Managing Director (GMD)/CEO Nigerian National Petroleum Company (NNPC) Limited, Dr. Mele Kyari, attended the function and so also was Mr. Bolaji Osunsanya, the CEO of Axxela. This resulted in the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between Axxela and the Nasarawa State Government for the execution and take-off of what they called the “NNPC-Nasarawa State-GACN Gas Utilization Collaboration.”
According to Governor Sule, Nigeria’s over 200 trillion cubic feet of gas reserves, means that gas, and not oil, represents the way to go and the future of energy, if the country must fully realize its business and economic potentials.
This explains why the new drive for partnerships between the public and private sectors has become stronger in developing new gas projects and pushing further the agenda for the Decade of Gas in the country.
One other example in this regard is the collaboration between the Nigerian Content Development and Monitoring Board (NCDMB) with Rungas through which they are building an LPG composite cylinder manufacturing plants in Bayelsa and Lagos States. These cylinder manufacturing facilities are credited with the capacity to produce 1.2-million units of gas cylinders per annum.
NCDMB is also partnering with Chimons to build a 5,000MT LPG loading and receiving terminal in Koko, Delta State and has teamed up with Butane Energy Limited to build LPG storage/bottling plants, as well as depots in Kaduna, Bauchi, Katsina, Kano, Nasarawa, Niger, Plateau, Gombe, Zamfara, Jigawa and Abuja.
Yet, it is still worthy of note that under the same partnership between Butane and NCDMB, Butane’s first 100MT storage and bottling plant in Katsina has already been completed and commissioned.
In as much as the journey towards actualizing the mission of transforming Nigeria from an oil into a gas nation is progressing steadily, Valuechain’s critical look at safety issues with respect to LPG use in Nigeria shows that there are key concerns that also need to be addressed, bearing in the mind the multiple incidents of gas explosion in the country in the past, and even recently. This is because, with Nigeria’s Decade of Gas already declared, the issue of safety also has to be taken seriously in order to keep the population safer, while scaling up gas production and energy sustainability but avoiding gas disasters.
This argument could be supported by taking a retrospective view of some fire disasters that happened in Nigeria and were directly traced to gas explosions.
For instance, in September 2018, an explosion rocked Lafia, the capital city of Nasarawa State, claiming the lives of many people, while about 50 more persons sustained various degrees of injuries.
The explosion was the result of gas leakage from a gas refill station located in the premises of Natson petrol station, setting over 20 motorcycles ablaze, while cars on the road also burnt with their occupants.
Reports had it that some of the victims were trapped in the inferno, while plying the Lafia–Abuja road, among whom were students of Nasarawa State Polytechnic, Lafia who were going to the school for lectures.
Then, in January 2020, there was a heavy gas explosion in Sabon Tasha area of Kaduna metropolis, which led to the death of seven persons, while several others sustained various degrees of injury. One of the casualties was a university professor, who was also the Chairman of the Nigeria Atomic Energy Commission, Prof. Simon Mallam and his son who were barbing in a saloon near the gas plant where the explosion occurred. Eyewitnesses said that a customer in the barbing salon beside the gas shop made a call, while a gas cylinder was being filled, resulting in a sudden blast.
The extent of property damage was great, as about six shops, including the gas retail outlet shop, were burnt down. It took the bravery of fire servicemen, police and other security personnel, alongside hundreds of sympathizers, to prevent the fire from spreading to other places.
Yet, in November 2021, a gas explosion in Lagos, Nigeria’s biggest city, killed at least five people, including a child, according to figures released by emergency services.
“There are four adults dead — three males and one female — and a 10-year-old boy died in the incident,” Ibrahim Farinloye of the National Emergency Management Agency confirmed.
In this particular case in Lagos, the fire broke out after a cylinder exploded at a gas shop in Mushin, a densely populated area of Lagos.
The cause of the explosion is not known yet but authorities are suspecting one of the gas cylinders exploded as a result of a fire close to the gas shop and work being done on one of the cylinders.
In a common practice of disregard for safety protocol when most Nigerians use gas for various purposes, out of the four bodies recovered from the scene of disaster was a woman, who eyewitnesses said was frying food items, another of the victims, a male, was operating on a gas cylinder. The fire destroyed three shops, six shanties and about 12 vehicles, according to Lagos State Fire Service.
The location of the gas shop within a residential area and along a power line was condemned by authorities, even as the shop was claimed to have been once closed by the state government because of its location.
And just recently on February 8, 2022, the Kano State Fire Service command confirmed that one person died in a gas explosion that occurred in Ijarawa village in Bichi Local Government Area of the state, while another person survived the incident.
The Public Relations Officer of the State Fire Service command, Saminu Abdullahi, confirmed that a J5 commercial vehicle was heading to Katsina from Kano and was conveying cooking gas cylinders when the disaster happened.
“We received a distress call from Inspector Daiyabu Tukur that a vehicle conveying cooking gas cylinders fell on the road and one of the cylinders exploded. Upon receiving the information, we quickly sent our team to the scene at about 8:00 a.m. to rescue the victims,” he said in a statement.
Then, there was an explosion reported on January 24, 2021 at a retail gas outlet in Rumudomaya community in Obio Akpor Local Government Area of Rivers State.
Witnesses said the explosion occurred at a private gas retail outlet on the popular Airport Road in Rumudomaya due to a spark in one of the refill tanks located close to the entrance of the service center.
Fortunately, in this case, no death was reported, but a staff of the gas retail outlet on night duty sustained varying degrees of burn.
With the above-mentioned incidences and many more happening periodically either reported or unreported, It is difficult to have reliable data on the total losses caused to people and property by fire outbreaks in Nigeria, or those related to gas explosions. However, to get an empirical view of how damaging fires could be in monetary terms, a look at data from the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) based in New York, USA reports that there were 490,500 structure fires in the United States in 2020, up 1.9 per cent from 2019.
The report also noted that such fires caused $12.1 billion in property damage in 2020, although down 1.6 per cent from $12.3 billion in 2019. The average loss for these structure fires was $24,669, down 3.4 per cent from 2019. This declining loss here shows that safety measures can reduce incidences of fire outbreaks in populated areas.
Also, vehicle, outside fires and fires in the California wildland-urban interface caused another $9.8 billion in property damage, bringing total property losses from fires to $21.9 billion.
Gas explosions are common in Nigeria, especially in Lagos, and one of such explosions also happened in October 2020 at a gas station, killing eight people and razing many buildings.
The Lagos State government once set up a team to monitor outlets where gas is stored in commercial quantity and carry out a safety audit in the state. About 1,850 places were surveyed, out of which 15 were closed for not compliance with safety standards, according to data from the Lagos State Safety Commission.
Federal lawmakers in Nigeria had once urged regulatory authorities to design a strategy to regulate the use of old gas cylinders, arguing that “the continued use of old cylinders can cause explosions, especially in poorly controlled environments.”
“All cylinders in Nigeria need to go through requalification tests, even if they are brand new ones, let’s establish a usage history. Workplace Safety Nigeria has developed a training for cylinder requalification process, using visual inspection method. This would be sufficient if carried out in accordance with the requirements of 49 CFR S172.704,” said Felix Nlerum, who is the Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of Work Place Safety Associates Nigeria Limited.
According to him, “the requirements entail knowledge of paint removal to ensure the cylinder walls are sufficiently observed, as well as the ability to inspect cuts, dents, impact damage, and understand the corresponding levels of damage, which are graduated as 1, 2, 3, including but not limited to how such levels impact final cylinder use.
“Also required is the ability to inspect the cylinder interior threads and O-rings, using high-intensity lights, as well as the ability to recognize corrosion, and understand acceptable tolerance levels for damages beyond which the cylinder must be repaired before use or decommissioned and taken out of service.”
Nlerum said that there are three ways in which a cylinder can be requalified, namely volumetric expansion test (water jacket method), internal hydrostatic test, and external visual inspection.
He also argued that the volumetric expansion test may be too complex for our situation in Nigeria now for a start, but with the external visual inspection method, a lot could be achieved immediately in keeping Nigerians safe from avoidable cases of gas explosion.
In his word, “the first and second methods are complex and too cumbersome for a start in our country.”
This area of safety is an area of huge investment and business opportunities, even as many uses are being created for our gas resources in Nigeria. Such investment opportunities exist in the Compressed Natural Gas, Liquefied Petroleum Gas and Liquefied Natural Gas value chains.
One key example is the National Gas Expansion Programme (NGEP), which is expected to create about three million direct and indirect jobs. The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) has set aside N250 billion as an intervention fund to support this programme.
The fund is available to finance the establishment of gas processing plants and small-scale petrochemical plants, gas cylinder manufacturing plants, compressed natural gas (CNG) regasification modular systems, automatic conversion kits or components manufacturing plants, CNG primary and secondary compression stations, as well as micro distribution outlets and service centres of liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) sales.
While the N250 billion facility from CBN continues to finance major developments in the gas sector of the Nigerian economy, it is also of prime importance that this same fund should be increasingly and continuously channeled towards financing the safety protocols that the country needs to keep its citizens safe in its obviously hopeful Decade of Gas.