FG targets 500 new CNG facilities as 160 stations operate

The Federal Government is targeting a major expansion of Nigeria’s Compressed Natural Gas infrastructure, with plans to establish 500 additional facilities as private-sector investment in the alternative fuel programme reaches $2.6bn.

The expansion comes as 160 CNG refuelling stations are operational nationwide, while another 170 facilities are undergoing development or awaiting regulatory approvals, according to the Executive Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of the Presidential Initiative on Compressed Natural Gas and Electric Vehicles, Ismaeel Ahmed.

Ahmed disclosed this on Friday at the inauguration of a CNG Integrated Refuelling Unit in Karu, Abuja, established through a partnership involving the State House, Pi-CNG and Electric Vehicles, and Rolling Energy.

He said Nigeria had moved beyond testing the viability of CNG as an alternative fuel, stressing that the next priority was to accelerate infrastructure development to meet the country's transportation needs.

“This is almost our 106th station across the country in less than two years. This is not beginning any longer. The market has been proven,” Ahmed said.

He added that private investors were committing about $2.6bn to the development of CNG infrastructure, while President Bola Tinubu had ordered another round of expansion.

“The investors are chipping in $2.6bn worth of private investment. Our President has ordered another round of about 500 infrastructure units to come in through the MDGIF. So I don’t think it’s a proof of concept any longer.

“It’s not the beginning. It’s a scale thing. Nigeria is 220 million people strong, 12 million vehicles. We are moving at a scale that we need to move. The work is in progress. What we need is to fasten up the scale,” he said.

Ahmed said additional facilities were expected to become operational between 2026 and early 2027, following the President’s directive to increase access to CNG across the country.

He urged more entrepreneurs to invest in the programme, saying the expansion of refuelling infrastructure was necessary to serve Nigeria’s large vehicle population and provide cheaper transportation fuel.

“A lot of entrepreneurs are seeing the need for this, and they are coming in, and we are calling them to come in and invest more,” he said.

Comparing the pace of development with the country’s petrol infrastructure, Ahmed said, “It took us 60 years to get to 24,000 PMS stations, and like the Permanent Secretary said, these are all privately owned.”

The Pi-CNG chief executive also said the adoption of CNG-powered buses had reduced transport fares by between 30 and 40 per cent on some routes.

He cited operations in Abuja, Lagos and Kano, including the Kano-Katsina route, where passengers were reportedly paying significantly lower fares than before the introduction of the buses.

The government’s drive to expand CNG adoption follows the removal of the petrol subsidy in 2023, which triggered a sharp increase in transportation costs.

Nigeria has substantial natural gas reserves, but much of the resource has remained underutilised, with significant volumes historically lost through gas flaring.

Speaking at the inauguration, the Permanent Secretary, State House, Temitope Fashedemi, said the facility reflected the government’s commitment to promoting CNG as an alternative transportation fuel and attracting private-sector investment.

He said the project was established by converting an abandoned petrol dispensing station owned by the State House into a CNG refuelling and vehicle conversion centre.

According to Fashedemi, the State House provided the existing facility, while Rolling Energy funded its rehabilitation and the installation of the required equipment.

He said the arrangement was designed to demonstrate how government institutions could support the CNG programme by making existing infrastructure available to private investors without incurring project expenditure.

Also speaking, the Chief Executive Officer of Rolling Energy, Mubarak Danbatta, said the facility demonstrated the benefits of collaboration between government institutions and private investors in expanding alternative fuel infrastructure.