 The Nigerian mainstream and downstream petroleum regulatory authority, NMDPRA, has said more collaborations and interventions are needed to improve domestic gas utilization in the country, despite the various initiatives and policy framework set up by the federal government. This was disclosed in Potaco during a stakeholders' engagement on gas utilization in Nigeria. The report. As global attention continues to shift toward cleaner energy, stakeholders in the oil and gas sector say more attention needs to be on the nation's gas resources. This formed the basis for discussion at a forum organized by the Nigerian mainstream and downstream petroleum regulatory authority in Port Accot. The executive director, distribution systems, storage and retailing infrastructure, Ogbugo Okowa noted that some of the heaviest consumers of diesel were operating outside the regulatory oversight, which was not in accordance with the Petroleum Industry Act. He added that the objective of the engagement was to enlighten consumers on the need to obtain the requisite petroleum storage license and to engender the transition from diesel, kerosene and fuel to gas. The law requires that if you have storage for more than 500 liters and you're handling volumes of petroleum much more than that, you need to apply for the relevant license. Secondly, we're also saying to these heaviest users of AGO that they need to begin to consider converting to gas because gas not only represents a cheaper but ultimately a cleaner source of energy. We believe that there's a huge gap between availability and utilization who would like to bridge that gap. Stakeholders at the engagement also advocated penetration of gas utilization to the public. Encourage the ease of penetration of gas utilization to our nation to the mechanism of petroleum product with the lack of legislation of Nigeria all over the nation and in particular for those of us in reverse state using our mechanism in reverse state. The PAA has actually developed particularly established within the authority the midstream and downstream gas infrastructure fund to enable more investments within that value chain and to see that gas is brought to Nigerians at very cheap rates. That's the essence of all this engagement to create this awareness and as we operationalize this fund we are very optimistic that the Nigerians will begin to reap the benefits sooner than later. How do regulators make it easy for us to be able to assess funds? When it comes to forex, everybody who buys a gas tank is buying a Belgium gas tank. Why? We can't afford the USD to buy new ones. The authority appealed to all petroleum handlers to fully comply with the provisions of the PAA and NMDPAA regulations and avoid strong regulatory enforcement which may adversely impact on business operations. Hello hope you enjoyed the news please do subscribe to our YouTube channel and don't forget to hit the notification button so you get notified about fresh news updates.