New law you need to know about before refilling your cooking gas

Energy and Petroleum Regulatory Authority (EPRA) director general Pavel Oimeke has announced that the law prohibiting the exchange of LPG gas cylinders is now in effect.

According to Mr Oimeke, the law will be gazetted to officially enforce that all cooking gas refills will be done by the specific oil marketing companies.

"The current regulations had not been clear as to who owns the cylinder between the user and the marketing companies.

No exchange of cooking gas cylinders - EPRA boss Pavel Oimeke announces new law Pulse Live Kenya

"The new regulations are clear that the brand owners are the owners of the cylinders and if there is an accident, the owner will take responsibility," Oimeke stated.

New law on cooking gas to affect customers

Customers will be the most affected by the new move as the local outlets as well as petrol stations will not be able to supply the commodity.

Chairman of the Petroleum Institute of East Africa Olagoke Aluko explained that one major issue they experienced with the past regulations was incidents where some marketers would hold on to a large quantity of cylinders belonging to other marketers.

"The vast majority of branded cylinders were never being returned to their original branded owners. Instead, the empty cylinder would move into a parallel market, be illegally refilled and returned back to retailers for sale again.

"About 90 per cent of cylinders owned by LPG marketers never returned, staying ‘out there’ through endless rounds of illegal refills and resales.

No exchange of cooking gas cylinders - EPRA boss Pavel Oimeke announces new law Pulse Nigeria

"Thus, cylinders were beginning to get damaged without never went through safety checks. And there lay the beginning of cylinders leaking, exploding and causing untold harm to people’s homes and lives

"Often one brand owner would end up with an excess of competitors’ empty cylinders, so they could not just swap cylinder for the cylinder. The competitors needed to pay them back the deposits on the excess cylinders," he explained.