Cooking gas usage hit 413,960 tonnes last year, a record high as consumers defied rising prices of the commodity, offering a major lift to the State ambitions of making the commodity the number one cooking fuel.
An analysis of official data from the Energy and Petroleum Regulatory Authority (Epra) shows that last year’s consumption was a rise of 14.8 percent from the 360,590 tonnes that homes, businesses and institutions used in 2023.
The rise in demand of Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG) came despite rising prices, as oil marketers denied consumers the benefits of falling global prices of the commodity and a strengthening shilling which reduced the cost of importing the fuel.
Consumers paid Sh3,143.85 for the 13-kilogramme cooking gas in December last year, up from Sh2,961.93 for the same quantity in January 2023 despite removal of three taxes on the commodity and a strong shilling which were expected to help lower prices.
“Our plan is to increase gas consumption from 6.5kg to 15kg per person per year, and enhance the penetration of gas usage from the current 24 per cent to 70 per cent,” Dr Ruto said when he launched the cooking gas project for public schools in December last year.
The eight percent Value Added Tax (VAT), 3.5 percent import declaration fee (IDF) and 2.5 railway development levy (RDF) were all removed in July 2023, in a bid to lower prices of the commodity.
The strengthening of the shilling last year coupled with fall in global prices of petroleum products was further expected to lower prices of cooking gas and boost the government’s ambitions of driving use of LPG.
But dealers failed to pass on the relief to consumers by lowering prices. Reduced costs of LPG could have driven its use further than the figures recorded last year.
Use of cooking gas has grown year on year since 2020, with the exception being a 10 percent drop in 2022 when 333,820 tonnes of LPG were used compared to 371,390 tonnes a year earlier.
The government has been keen to grow the use of LPG and make it the number one cooking fuel, in a move meant to lower pollution of the environment by fossil fuels like kerosene and cut the health hazards tied to use of charcoal.
Firewood is the leading cooking fuel in Kenya with half of the population nationally and 84 percent of the rural population using it. Unlike cooking gas, firewood is easily accessible and cheaper compared to other fuels like LPG, kerosene and charcoal.
The ambitious plan is also pegged on the construction of a common-user facility by Kenya Pipeline Company (KPC) to handle imported LPG and allowing more private firms to set up facilities to handle cooking gas imports.
For example, Kenya Pipeline Company is set to build a Sh17 billion facility that will have a capacity of 30,000. The facility will be located in the Coastal town of Changamwe.
Besides homes, the government launched a project that aims to ensure that 11,000 schools in the country are connected to gas to end the use of firewood and charcoal. The project was launched in December last year at Jamhuri High School in Nairobi.
The government has in the past tried to spur uptake of cooking gas by households through distributing 6-kg cooking gas cylinders and burners at subsidized prices of Sh2,000.
But the project, dubbed Mwananchi Gas and which was rolled out in 2016 by National Oil Corporation of Kenya, flew into headwinds amid supply of faulty cylinders.
