The federal government on Thursday, 19 September, took delivery of the converted Nigeria Railway Corporation’s (NRC) locomotive which runs on Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) and diesel.
The retrofitted locomotive is a Public-Private Partnership project with De-Sadel Consortium.
Minister of Transportation, Sen. Said Alkali made the disclosure during the final test run of the retrofitted locomotive from the Idu Train Terminal to the Kubwa Train Station in the Federal Capital Territory (FCT).
Alkali said: “To God be the glory; the locomotive is successfully retrofitted. It is using LNG 70 per cent and diesel 30 per cent.
“The retrofit will enable the engines to work on a dual-fuel system with the locomotive running on 70 percent gas and 30 percent diesel.
“The idea is that by the time you use LNG 70 per cent, the cost of running the locomotive will drastically reduce.
“There was a presidential directive that all ministries, departments and agencies to transit from petroleum and diesel to Compressed Natural Gas (CNG) and LNG”.
He said that the desire of President Bola Tinubu by the conversion from diesel to gas was to bring down the cost of transportation in the country.
“Transportation is the gateway of the nation’s economy. By the time the cost of transportation is low, obviously inflation will drop”, he said.
On the partnership with De-Sadel, Alkali said that the ministry has been engaging with investors to boost the lot of the ministry.
“Immediately when I took over as the minster of transportation, the ministry was open to investors.
“De-Sadel approached the ministry that they are going to retrofit all our locomotives for 70 per cent LNG and 30 per cent diesel.
“Today, the locomotive is successfully retrofitted. We are riding on the locomotive”.
He further said that the idea of retrofitting was to unbundle the Nigerian Railway Corporation adding that already, the National Assembly has started the process of unbundling the NRC Act through repeal and reenactment.
“This is so that we allow private investors to come and invest in all our rail corridors”.
The Chief Executive Officer of De-Sadel Consortium, Samuel Uko, said “We will sustain the project, All the Nigerian Railway Corporation locomotives will be converted to run on LNG.
He said NRC and his company have a 20-years agreement in place.
“Running the locomotives with LNG will reduce inflation in the country because, with LNG, we can crash the price of transportation by 50 per cent”.
