THE Federal Government has backpedalled on its proposed move to provide free conversion services to motorists to switch from Premium Motor Spirit (PMS) to autogas.
The government had said in September that Nigerians would incur no costs to get their vehicles converted to those using gas in its plan to make gas the first choice of cheaper and cleaner energy.
According to the government this became necessary to cushion the effect of the hike in the pump price of petroleum which is one of the consequences of the deregulation of the downstream sector of the oil industry.
But speaking on Wednesday, Justice Derefaka, Technical Adviser on Gas Business and Policy implementation to Minister of State for Petroleum, Timipre Sylva, said car owners would pay up to N250,000 to have their vehicles converted to run on gas.
Derefaka, who is also the Programme Manager, Nigerian Gas Flare Commercialisation Project, stated this today while featuring on Channels Television’s Sunrise Daily programme.
According to him, conversion of vehicles from petrol to run on gas will take at least seven hours at the various conversion centres across the country.
He said there are different payment approaches to making the conversion, adding that vehicle owners can have agreement with commercial banks to get their conversion done.
He said, “The conversion of your vehicle is not something that will take three weeks or seven days; it will take you around seven to eight hours because they (technicians) need to do a diagnosis of your vehicle to see if it is fit for conversion. After that, they will test for roadworthiness and then proceed.”
When asked who bears the cost for the conversion of the vehicles, the official said,
“Who owns the car? The owner of the car basically will decide to say I want to run on autogas or CNG or LNG and like the honourable minister had mentioned before, conversion has basic strands, you can partner with your bank and the bank will now agree with the conversion centre to convert your vehicle, not for free entirely.
“The installer will now put some form of mechanism that each time you buy the gas; a certain amount will be deducted to pay for the conversion kit. Some people will say it is too expensive but I don’t think it is because within a period of five to seven months, you’ve already paid off the cost.
“The cost varies, it depends on the cylinder of the vehicle but on the average, it is around N200,000 to N250,000 and this is for a four-cylinder vehicle but it becomes a little bit higher for a six-cylinder vehicle.”
Derefaka noted that some centres have started the conversion already.
“If you take your vehicle to some of the centres like the one commissioned yesterday (Tuesday), technicians and original equipment manufacturers are there so you can bring your vehicles for conversion to start running on gas.” he stated.
He also said 50 conversion centres will be upgraded and by January 2021, there will be conversion centres across the six geopolitical zones of the country.
The minister’s aide said the move will reduce carbon emissions as well as the demand for petrol.
The Federal Government on Tuesday inaugurated the autogas scheme in Abuja, insisting that it will be more economical to power automobiles using autogas rather than petrol.
The government had also said it would convert one million vehicles to run on autogas before the end of 2020.
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