By Chidi Ugwu
Minister of Transportation, Senator Said Alkali on Thursday assured that the train ride fares would crash by no less than 60 per cent following the successful completion of retrofitting of the first set of the Nigerian Railway Corporation’s (NRC) locomotives from diesel to Liquified Natural Gas (LNG) powered.
The Minister stated this at Idu Railway Station during a test drive of one of the trains which now runs on 70 percent LNG and 30 percent diesel.
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The project, handled by an indigenous company, the De-Sadel consortium, is part of innovative ways by which the federal government is working to ensure cost-efficiency and make train services more economical for Nigerians.
“We are doing is that we want to cut cost.
“When you look at the 70% component of the LNG, as against the 70% that was used on diesel, certainly the cost of using LNG will be drastically reduced to about 60 percent”.
Alkali stated that the milestone achieved in the conversion of NRC locomotive to run on diesel/LNG will further save the cost of running the commercial trains.
The exercise called “retrofitting” is achieved with a 30 percent ratio of diesel and 70 percent of Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) usage.
The Minister further explained that “the locomotives were using diesel 100%. By retrofitting, we are going to use LNG 70% and diesel 30%. That is what we mean by retrofitting.
“The idea is by the time you use LNG 70%, the cost of running the locomotives will drastically be reduced. I am assuring Nigerians that we are going to enforce that. By the time all our locomotives are retrofitted, certainly the cost of transportation must drop drastically” he stated.
Alkali declined the possibility of the retrofitted locomotive’s running 100 percent on LNG, stating that “you convert to LNG 100% because it is a heavy engine. Normally, combustion is done with smaller engines like generators and cars. But this locomotives were manufactured on diesel and it is not possible technically to convert them to CNG or LNG 100%” he noted.
