The LPG Marketing Companies Association have made a fervent appeal to the authorities to lift the ban that they said has restricted their activities over the past four years.
The ban on their activities was imposed following the Atomic Junction gas station fire disaster in 2017 that claimed many lives and destroyed properties.
However, after about four years of assessment, the association said it was time for the government to open up the local space and ensure the strict application of the rules to avoid future disasters.
In their petition to the Ministry of Energy, signed by the Chairman of the LPG Marketing Companies Association, Malam Bukari Amadu, the association said that their investments have dwindled as a result of the restrictions and it has also affected the local economy in general.
“We have about one hundred LPG retail outlets at various stages of construction across the country which approximates to about GH¢60 million worth of investments prior to the Atomic Junction incident, in October 2017. They are all in limbo,” the petition said.
“Out of this number, about fourteen (14) of the outlets had been completed and were awaiting pre-commissioning permits from the National Petroleum Authority (NPA), another twenty-one (21) outlets had received fire permits, Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) permits, Metropolitan Municipal and District Assembly Development (MMDA) permits as well as NPA Construction permits, and the rest (about 65) had received ‘No Objection’ letters and were at different Regulatory Permitting stages,” the association explained.
According to LPG marketers, they are not against any attempt to bring sanity into the sector but also said “it would be sad to allow our meager and hard-earned resources to go to waste, especially when these investments were made not contrary to the law and regulations but in accordance with existing laws and regulations at the time.”
“It is worth noting that the bulk of funds for these investments came from loans from the banks which we are paying at high cost to our members. It was therefore only fair that we engage government and our regulator to find a reasonable solution to this challenge,” they stated.
The LPG marketers said the new LPG promotion policy of the government, through the Cylinder Recirculation Model (CRM) has not yet started, “it will only be fair to allow our members complete and operate all the outlets under construction, because these same outlets would in future become cylinder exchange points when the CRM is eventually rolled out.”
“The LPGMCs are urgently appealing to government for permission to be allowed to complete all the stations under construction within a specified period and operate them,” the pushed, adding that “We are of the view that the CRM policy cannot be implemented successfully without first addressing the question of what happens to our current investments at our retail outlets, investments done in accordance with existing laws and regulations.”