NNPC raises hope on improved electricity supply

Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) has raised hopes on improved electricity supply nationwide.

This follows the expected addition of a total of 855 million standard cubic feet of gas to the domestic gas supply in the short term in the next few months, following the forecast completion and commissioning of four infrastructure projects by Nigerian Petroleum Development Company (NPDC) and International Oil Companies (IOCs).

In the submission made by the corporation in Kano, Monday at the sixth monthly meeting of operators in the power sector chaired by Babatunde Fashola, minister of power, works and housing, NNPC said about 70 percent of the gas would be sent to power plants across the country for use in generation.

 According to the Corporation, it is estimated that the increase in gas supply to power plants would increase generation capacity by approximately 2000mw by mid 2017 even as the meeting also resolved to persuade oil and gas producers to explore better ways of re-injection to boost oil production by using water instead of gas, in order to increase the amount of gas available for domestic consumption.

In the seven point communiqué after the meeting which also had the Minister of State in the Ministry of Power, Works and Housing, Mustapha Baba Shehuri in attendance, Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN) also reported completion of 20 projects since the last meeting listing the projects to include those in Gwagwalada, Kaduna, Afam, Apo, Lekki and Omotosho (Ondo State).

TCN, which said the completion of the projects should improve distribution in Abuja and Lagos, also announced its continuing efforts to improve electricity transmission to be reported at each subsequent meeting while it also made a commitment to restore power to Maiduguri, Borno State’s Capital in the next month after a long period of outage.

Acknowledging the need to put in place a more robust mechanism on information sharing between the Federal Ministry of Power, Works and Housing, the GenCos and the DisCos, the meeting noted that the public still refers operational issues to the Federal Ministry of Power, Works and Housing that were better directed to GenCos and DisCos for operational action.

In furtherance of aggressive metering plans, the meeting commended Kano DisCo for the launch of 68,000 out of its 100,000 meter roll out plan for 2016 while all DisCos agreed to use all available media including social media to let the public know all the work being done to roll out metering.