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COMPRESSED NATURAL GAS AS THE SOOTHING BALM-ALLEVIATING THE IMPACT OF PMS SUBSIDY REMOVAL By Felix Awonaiya

  The appointment of a Minister of State, Gas, and Petroleum Resources shows that this is a focused and well-prepared government intent on taking the country to the next level of development. Iran satisfies around 22% of its basket of energy needs from Compressed Natural Gas (CNG). There were about 2,500 CNG dispensing stations in 2021 for a population of about 90m, and their government is making concerted efforts to increase the use of CNG further even as they suffer from periodic gas shortages. Our population, t hough the last election returns  may undermine this as a mirage is estimated at 220m. We would be fortunate to reach 100 CNG stations by the end of 2024 if we go with the current pace, and that is even if fortune smiles on us. Nothing but a drop in the ocean, if it can even be called that. Concerted measures such as those enumerated below are needed to shift the mix of CNG in our fuel basket to double-digit figures in the life of this administration. It can and should be done

RESOLVING THE POWER SECTOR CONUNDRUM

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RESOLVING THE POWER SECTOR CONUNDRUM SYNOPSIS One of the greatest impediments to the country realizing its full economic and social potential is the current comatose state of the power sector. There is currently a huge gap between demand and supply of electricity, made worse by the fact that less than a third of the installed grid generation capacity is wheeled to consumers, necessitating a reliance on captive sources and millions of micro plants scattered all over the country. Power Africa, the US Government initiative for the sector in Africa estimates that total installed capacity is about 16.3GW, which appears to be within range of the figure of 18GW given by the Power Minister recently in an interview. The claims also corroborated a study by the inte rnational consulting firm KPMG,  that Nigeria currently generates about 8GW of energy in total. It is however important to note that this figure includes grid, embedded and captive sources and presumably excludes the ubiquitous microp