The National Petroleum Authority (NPA) has made a paradigm shift in its LPG importation methods.
The strategic overhaul is intended to reduce costs and enhance operational efficiency, underscores the NPA’s commitment to fostering a more robust and streamlined energy sector.
The NPA held its inaugural bidding competition for LPG importation on January 29th, 2024.
The company that won the bid offered the cheapest price of US$30. 39 per metric ton for the four lots that were up for bidding from March to June 2024.
The price is going down a lot from the current price of between USD67 per metric ton to USD98 per metric ton.
Each lot weighs about 20,000 metric tonnes.
The NPA wants to save money and make things work better by using open competitive tenders to import LPG.
The open competition proposal got approved after talking to many Bulk Import, Distribution and Export Companies (BIDECs) and most of them agreed with it.
The Authority said that the amount being offered each month is about 70 percent of the LPG that Ghana uses each month, and the Ghana National Gas Company provides the rest.
The NPA suggested using Open Competitive Tenders to bring LPG into Ghana more efficiently and make it cheaper through competition.
This was one idea to make LPG cheaper to help the Cylinder Recirculation Model. The model needs to be affordable for it to work well.
We talked about the proposal a lot to see if it would work. We decided it would help save money on importing LPG. So we can go ahead and talk to the BIDECs to get their approval before we start it.
There were many interactions with BIDECs in 2023.
These discussions led to most of the BIDECs agreeing with the proposal, even though a few had some concerns.
The boss listened to the worries of some people but decided that they weren’t enough to stop the new rule from being put into action.
The information the Authority has about LPG imports by BIDECs over the years shows that there is a big difference in the extra money paid to the International Oil Trading Companies.
This happened because the BIDECs imported less LPG in smaller amounts.
The Authority thinks that if they buy a lot of LPG at once through a competitive process, it will cost less and make importing LPG more efficient.
source:tigpost.co