KALI­FA SARAH CLYNE

The Na­tion­al Pe­tro­le­um Com­pa­ny (NP) will be head­ing to Haiti next week to ex­plore the op­tion of es­tab­lish­ing a chain of gas sta­tions as well as a Liqui­fied Pe­tro­le­um Gas (LPG) plant in that coun­try.This was an­nounced by NP CEO Ken Mo­hammed yes­ter­day at the launch of the com­pa­ny's Jour­ney cam­paign, a re­brand­ing and mar­ket­ing cam­paign to ex­pand the com­pa­ny's reach and ap­peal.

In an in­ter­view af­ter the launch, Mo­hammed said there was in­ter­est from Hait­ian in­di­vid­u­als to part­ner with NP on projects."We are go­ing to look at the lay of the land, look at the in­fra­struc­ture of the sta­tions and look at the lay­out and take things from there," Mo­hammed said.He said there was a huge de­mand for LPG in that coun­try and start­ing with Haiti was a good op­por­tu­ni­ty to ex­pand busi­ness in oth­er is­lands.

NP has gas sta­tions in Do­mini­ca and is cur­rent­ly look­ing at coun­tries like Guyana, Pana­ma and Suri­name as po­ten­tial coun­tries to ex­pand busi­ness.The com­pa­ny is cur­rent­ly en­gaged in an ex­er­cise to up­grade all of its gas sta­tions lo­cal­ly.He said the com­pa­ny will ren­o­vate one gas sta­tion per month and is al­so in the process of build­ing gas sta­tions on high­ways across the coun­try.He said a lot of the gas sta­tions will be able to pro­vide com­pressed nat­ur­al gas (CNG).

"With­in the next five years we are look­ing to have 62 sta­tions in the coun­try that will pro­vide CNG."