Energy chief: LPG as cab fuel losing appeal

With petroleum prices down, taxi drivers and operators have been shifting away from the use of LPG or liquefied petroleum gas as fuel, which the drivers are also blaming for a host of health problems, according to Acting Energy Secretary Zenaida Monsada.

Speaking in a Senate hearing on the 2016 budget of the Department of Energy (DOE), Monsada on Tuesday cited data showing there are now only 7,000 taxis using LPG nationwide from a high of 20,000.

She said the dip on gas prices had made LPG “unattractive” to taxi drivers. Many vehicles which were earlier converted to run on LPG had been installed with a gadget that allows them to use either LPG or gasoline, the Cabinet official explained in a hearing presided over by finance subcommittee chair Sen. Serge Osmeña III.

“And there are now issues coming out about LPG, that it smells and makes taxi drivers sick,” Monsada said, adding that dizziness was a common complaint. She also agreed when Osmeña pointed out that leaky LPG tanks may be the culprit.

A government interagency committee is now looking into these complaints, she said. “(The committee) wants to clarify the real score about LPG as far as the taxi drivers are concerned,” Monsada said.

The committee includes the Department of Health (DOH), which she said is conducting a study to “validate claims of taxi drivers that they are getting sick because LPG.”

As early as October 2012, however, the DOH revealed the findings of a study on the health risks posed by “improperly converted” taxis that use LPG.

Increasing complaints of dizziness, headache, light-headedness and dryness of throat among taxi drivers prompted the DOH to conduct the study with the National Poison Management and Control Center based on the University of the Philippines campus in Diliman.

The study covered randomly selected male drivers of 26 LPG and 13 conventional vehicles. DOH regional director Eduardo Janairo then reported that exposure to auto-LPG caused them headaches, back or nape pain, chest pain, cough, dizziness, dry throat, fatigue and muscle weakness, nausea and breathing difficulty.

These maladies were further traced to the decreased delivery of oxygen to the body’s vital organs. “Overexposure may cause unconsciousness and even death,” the study also warned.

LPG-converted vehicles also exposed the drivers to a level of hydrogen sulfide 68 times higher than that measured in conventional vehicles. The carbon monoxide level, meanwhile, was eight times higher.

The findings came out a year after the Inquirer published a four-part special report on LPG-powered vehicles and the health risks they posed, based mainly on interviews with drivers.

The use of LPG as automotive fuel in the country was promoted for its environmental benefits and cost efficiency as early as 2002, three years after the passage of the Clean Air Act.

In a position paper that year, the Philippine Liquefied Petroleum Gas Association Inc. noted that LPG use results in lower greenhouse gas emissions and does not adversely affect soil and water in case of leakage.

In 2008, with about 7,000 vehicles running on LPG locally, the Arroyo administration launched a P1-billion program to help owners of jeepneys, buses and taxis convert their diesel- or gasoline-fed engines.

But in November 2011, Monsada, then the director of the Oil Industry Management Bureau of the DOE, said the problems arising from the use of LPG as vehicle fuel could be traced primarily to a faulty conversion process.—With Inquirer Research