The Chief Executive Officer of Kaysens Gas Company Limited and Chairman of PSSTC, E.D.M. Stephens ACP (Rtd) has stated that the Cylinder Recirculation Model is highly capital intensive and may push lots of indigenous Liquified Gas Petroleum (LPG) operators out of business.

According to him, over $400 million in investments have been made by indigenous Ghanaians while employing over 10,000 Ghanaian workers through the existing plant.

“By the very nature of CRM. It is highly capital-intensive. That makes it mostly a preserve of foreigners due to the total neglect of local nationals who are employed as hewers of wood and drawers of water. By this unenforced arrangement, huge sums of foreign currencies are repatriated out of the country as profits every year by these foreign and semi-foreign companies. It is therefore interesting to reveal that not even one dollar has gone out of the country for the full thirty years of the operation of the Existing LPG plants”.

“It may be needless to add that the present close to 30% use of LPG in the country has been achieved solely by the existing plants without any involvement of the CRM. Therefore, to suggest 50% LPG penetration by 2050 is achievable, without the input of existing plants scattered all over the country, is to expose one’s naivety”, he added.

 E.D.M. Stephens ACP (Rtd) continued that nationals from Ivory Coast, Nigeria and Kenya. who are practicing the CRM are regularly trooping to Ghana to copy the existing LPG plant, adding, “Indeed, even some of the so-called foreign experts brought into the country by the NPA come to our stations rather to copy our system and extensively take photographs with them. It is therefore a very disturbing situation confirming that we are swimming against the tide.”.

He further stated that it is untrue the LPG Marketers Association is not cooperating with the NPA in the implementation of the CRM.

“That’s a palpable and blatant lie. Right from day one, the association has held several meetings with the NPA, joined NPA staff on its regional and, even international tours and even allowed the NPA to use some of the existing plants for its pilot projects”, it added.

Even at this critical moment, he pointed out that the association is only asking for a parallel system where both the CRM and existing plants will compete.