Turbogas Engineering Company, based in Ikeja, Lagos, is set to create the first gas user cluster in Rivers State to serve industries in the second biggest economy in Nigeria .
The company has already chosen Boskel Cluster at kilometre 16 on Port-Aba Expressway near Intels headquarters for the first area, but prospective consumers in other parts of the garden city have cried out for inclusion.
To set the ball rolling, Turbogas, working through Logistics Resources Limited, managed by Ugo Ohuabunwa (one of the Ohuabunwa business moguls), has held a sensitisation forum with end-users around the area who showed eagerness to join the gas cluster.
They made the decision after listening to a presentation by the corporate affairs director of Turbogas, Jossy Aiguwurhuo, an ex-shell gas expert, who said it was better for end-users to join the cluster and enjoy cheaper rates. He said a the company could cover 30km radius but chose to deal with five km for maximum
He however told the business leaders that the company was capable of installing gas generators for individual companies that would have specific needs. It may take six months after investment decision to complete a installation and commissioning, he said.
Turbogas officials said the scheme is a strategy to boost profitability of firms by reducing energy costs by 500 percent, saying what one litre of diesel sold at about N160 would generate is what gas of N30 would generate.
The corporate affairs director traced the gas investment history in Nigeria and said the pricing bottleneck has been resolved by the intervention of the World Bank while individual companies can now generate power, just by obtaining license from the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC).
More, he reminded the audience of a N500billion special investment loan scheme domiciled in the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) to fund genuine investors in the sector at mere seven percent interest rate. He said hopes for public sector power efficiency and stability were far-fetched, urging big-time users to form clusters for gas or purchase gas generators that now use compressed natural gas (CNG).
Responding to the clamour for more clusters to be created in Port Harcourt, the managing director of Logistics Resources (Ohuabunwa), said Nigeria lost power adequacy many years ago due to longtime decline in investment in the sector, population growth with high power demands, lack of maintenance of existing power facilities, etc. He said all these led to the collapse of industries and loss of jobs. “So, Nigeria is now paying a price for what it failed to do.”
The answer, he said, is in coming together to take power destinies in our hands and reduce over dependency on the national grid. He warned those who think their states were building power stations, saying the power generated would be sent to the national grid and the highest a producer would get as extra would be five percent.
Speaking, Edughom Hanson, deputy managing director of Wider Perspective, an event managing outfit in Port Harcourt, urged firms within the designed cluster to make haste so that a final decision could be taken for the size of gas plant and transformers to be deployed.
