The Chief Executive Officer of the National Petroleum Authority (NPA), Dr. Mustapha Abdul-Hamid has said the Cylinder Recirculation Module (CRM) will be implemented on a full scale by the end of 2022 after a successful pilot project.
NPA and the Ministry of Energy launched the pilot implementation of the CRM policy at Yendi in the northern region and Kade in the Eastern region.
The policy, when implemented, is expected to reduce Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG) related accidents and also ensure that about 50 per cent of the Ghanaian population have access to safe, clean and environmentally friendly LPG for increased domestic, commercial and industrial usage by 2030.
This is also expected to create employment opportunities along the value-chain.
The Director for Midstream at NPA, Madam Akua Ntiwaa Kwaakye, told Journalists in Tamale that the CRM policy will start this year.
He also disclosed an impact assessment exercise is being conducted at the pilot project areas which report finding she added will be out this month.
Madam Ntiwaa made the announcement when the Chief Executive of the NPA, Dr Mustapha Abdul-Hamid, led senior staff on a familiarisation tour of the northern region last Tuesday.
“I’m sure you’re aware that we started the pilot in the eastern region and Yendi? What we did was to test the end-user bit of it because there are different operators or providers within the value-chain. But then, we have bottling plants, transporters, marketers and retailers; at the time we started the bottling plants were not ready – so we just did the end-user bit of it. We anticipate the bottling plants will be ready third quarter, they are working on it and they are going to be ready by Q3 this year and when it starts, we will work on the whole value-chain from bottling plant to the end-user and certainly the CRM is going to happen this year” Madam Kwaakye explained.
Dr Mustapha Abdul-Hamid with his team visited the Bulk Oil Storage and Transportation Company (BOST) situated at Buipe in the Savannah Region.
He later interacted with COP Timothy Yoosa Bongo, the Northern Regional Police Commander to ensure compliance of the law regulating the petroleum industry.
The NPA Chief Executive stated, “I was appointed Chief Executive of the National Petroleum Authority on July 1, 2021, and of course, as part of knowing the organization it is important to tour all the facilities, installations, offices that come under the purview of the National Petroleum Authority.
“You ought to know the organization before you can even begin to fashion out any comprehensive or a coherent strategic plan to move the organization forward.”
Dr. Abdul-Hamid said NPA has identified the bottleneck during the piloting which includes the inadequacy of gas cylinders in the country to run it to a full scale.
He noted that every person that consumes LPG will need about three cylinders and for that matter, the cylinders in the country would need to be tripled to be able to run the CRM on a full scale.
For his part, the Director in charge of Policy Coordination, Mr Jacob Amuah, highlighted the essence for the introduction of the Bulk Road Vehicles (BRV) tracking system in the transportation of petroleum products.
According to him, the cost of transporting petroleum products is a determining factor in the pricing window, therefore, the NPA introduced the price equalisation mechanism to mitigate the inequality gap for all.
According to him, the fund had been subjected to abuse which necessitated the implementation of the tracking system to monitor the destination of the distribution tankers.
“In time past, this has been subject to abuse, that is, somebody can buy from Tema purported to take it any part – normally they say that, I’m bringing it to the north or even further and come and claim from the fund; because we didn’t have visibility in terms of whether carried out that activity or not, we needed to install what we call BRV tracking system. What it does for us is that, it allows us to see where every truck that carried the petroleum product arrived and where it discharged the product since it has an impact on the cost that we pay as freight to the transporters of the product” he explained.
