Cooking gas price increases by 14.4% in October – NBS

By Adaobi Rhema Oguejiofor

The National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) has revealed that the average retail cost for refilling a 12.5kg cylinder of Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG), also known as Cooking Gas, increased on a month-on-month rise by 14.04 percent, from N9,247.40 in September 2023 to N10,545.87 in October 2023.

This was contained in the latest LPG price watch released by NBS for October 2023. According to the report, when compared with the corresponding period of 2022, the cost of cooking gas increased by 4.93 percent from N10,050.53 in October 2022.

The average retail price for 5kg gas in Nigeria also increased by 8.89 percent from N4,189.96 recorded in September to N4,562.51 in October. 

Reports show that cooking gas prices are on an increase for two reasons, which are low investment in natural gas exploration across the country and low production of associated gas as a result of the crude oil theft rampant in the Niger Delta.

Although Nigeria boasts of over 200 trillion cubic feet of natural gas reserve, which puts her among the top ten countries with the largest gas reserves in the world, the issue of low investment has resulted in the country being an importer of LPG.