Oil marketers and dealers will be required to keep customer details for at least two years or risk a fine of Sh20,000 in a fresh bid to boost safety and accountability in the use of Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG).
The requirement to keep details such as customer name and mobile number is contained in the Petroleum (Liquefied Petroleum Gas Regulations), 2025. A breach of this will attract a fine of Sh20,000 for every sale.
Currently, the retention period of customer details is a year with a fine of Sh50,000 for each breach.
The extended retention of customer data is meant to entrench accountability and keep track of all LPG sold from the seller to end users , ultimately placing responsibility on the seller for any mishap caused by unsafe containers.
Dealers and oil marketers will file the customer details into a central tracking system at the point of sale. The Energy and Petroleum Regulatory Authority (Epra) will be the custodian of this database.
‘A person licensed to wholesale or retail liquid petroleum gas in cylinders, shall issue a receipt at the point of sale which shall include the information in sub-regulation (1) and (2),’ the regulations read.
‘The records under this regulation shall be maintained for at least twenty-four months.’
Sellers will also be required to keep information such as unit and total price of the transaction, indicating the cylinder deposit where applicable.
The regulations are currently undergoing public scrutiny before going to Parliament for approval and then gazettement.
The requirement will also apply to the sale of LPG to wholesale traders, boosting the ease with which Epra can trace faulty cylinders especially when accidents occur when the end customers are using the commodity.
Besides safety, keeping of the records is also key in providing historical information to resolve disputes like billing that are filed with the industry regulator.
The requirement on dealers and oil marketers to issue receipts that include their details like name, contacts of the consumer, cylinder brand and serial numbers of the cylinders came into force five years ago.
The regulator has since 2019 been intensifying efforts to tighten rules and impose heavy sanctions for violations in the LPG sector, in a bid to stifle a thriving black market especially in the estate and informal areas.
Epra’s push to tighten the legal framework on the sale of LPG comes amid a spike in the use of the commodity as the preferred cooking fuel.
Consumption of cooking gas hit a record high of 413,960 tonnes last year, a growth of 14.8 percent from 360,590 tonnes used in 2023.
The growing LPG market has attracted both foreign and local firms who are keen to set up facilities for handling imported LPG or refilling stations. These firms include Lake Gas and Taifa Gas of Tanzania and Nigeria’s Asharami Energy.