OPEC Launches Finance Campaign As LPG Demand Set To Reach 1.4 Million Barrels Per Day
The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) is sustaining campaign to attract more financing for smooth shift to Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG) which is considered a cleaner cooking fuel.
The LPG demand is projected to increase by 1.4 million barrels per day (mb/d) between 2024 and 2050, reaching over 11.7 mb/d by 2050.
The Organization advocates for policies and programmers to promote, finance and implement projects that expand the utilization of LPG across regions and countries.
The OPEC Member Countries have been playing a significant role in this area through initiatives such as the ‘Oil Sustainability Program’ and the ‘Clean Cooking Roadmap’.
As LPG production is integrated with the oil and gas industry’s production chain, meeting an expansion of LPG demand requires oil market stability.
This underscores the broader context of the need for more investment in the oil and gas industry, given the central role of petroleum and petroleum-derived products like LPG for so many aspects of modern life.
The OPEC has consistently called for timely and adequate investments in the oil industry.
In its recently published World Oil Outlook 2025, the Organization estimated that required cumulative investments in the oil industry amount to $18.2 trillion by 2050.
These investments will be crucial in ensuring energy security and alleviating energy poverty.
The LPG as a product can be vital in ensuring the most vulnerable members of society are looked after.
It can be lifesaving. Hopefully, in 2030 the world can celebrate the achievement of universal access to clean cooking fuels and technologies.
The LPG, and the oil and gas industries, will be instrumental in making this vision a reality.
Roughly a quarter of the world’s population, about 2.1 billion people, depend on polluting fuels for cooking. Inefficient cooking fuels pose major health risks, leading to diseases and deaths. Household air pollution is responsible for around 3.2 million deaths per year.
The solution to overcoming this tragic challenge is clear: upscaling clean cooking fuels.
The World Health Organization (WHO) has issued guidelines on what constitutes a clean fuel. For cooking, it is a fuel or technology that attains the fine particulate matter and carbon monoxide levels recommended in the WHO’s global air quality guidelines.
Examples include solar power, biogas, natural gas and liquefied petroleum gas (LPG).
The importance of LPG in achieving the UN’s Sustainable Development Goal 7, part of which aims to achieve universal access to clean cooking by 2030, has been emphasized by a range of actors.
Indeed, LPG is regarded as the primary solution to attaining that goal and increasing access to LPG stoves and canisters has been critical in progress achieved to date.
The benefits of LPG are clear as using LPG directly emits half the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, on average, compared to the traditional use of biomass. LPG stoves are also convenient, easily transported and have high energy efficiency.
The LPG is produced by the oil and gas industry and around 60 per cent of the total amount of LPG produced globally is recovered directly from oil and gas fields.
Throughout the oil refining process, there are also various stages when LPG is produced, for example, during atmospheric distillation, reforming and cracking. At a global level, approximately 40 per cent of LPG is a byproduct of oil refining.