Law on safe use of LPG pushed

The passage of a law that ensures the safe use of cooking gas or liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) is being pushed in the Senate, with the alarm raised on the proliferation of substandard products as households continue to stay home amid lingering new coronavirus disease pandemic.

Sen. Sherwin Gatchalian, who chairs the Senate committee on energy, said in a statement that Senate Bill No. 1188 or the proposed LPG Act sought to streamline existing laws and regulations overseeing the domestic LPG industry.

Gatchalian said the bill was also aimed at instituting reforms in the LPG industry, addressing concerns in health, safety, security and the environment as well as effectively ensure that consumer welfare remained paramount.

He said there were about 8 million households that use LPG every day, citing data from the Family Income and Expenditure Survey in 2015. Meanwhile, based on the 2010 Survey of Energy Consumption of Establishments, there were 144,065 business establishments using LPG.

But Gatchalian lamented that substandard LPG cylinders might have illegally entered the country and were now inside the homes of many Filipino families.

“(W)e have flammable material inside a canister that is unregulated because it didn’t go through any government regulation and now it’s in the homes of our constituents,” he said. “Our poor constituents will not have the means to recover if there are accidents due to these unregulated cylinders and canisters.”

The lawmaker said that from 2010 to April this year, there were 1,139 fires caused by LPG explosions from defective cylinders and ancillary equipment and LPG leaks.

He said an LPG law would “fill the regulatory gaps” that industry players were now experiencing and would strengthen various regulations that the government has issued on importation, refining, refilling, transportation, conveyance, distribution and marketing of LPG and the manufacturing, re-qualifying, exchanging and swapping of LPG pressure vessels. INQ