The projected completion and commissioning of four infrastructure projects by the Nigerian Petroleum Development Company (NPDC), a subsidiary of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), in conjunction with international oil companies (IOCs) will contribute 2000 megawatts to the national grid by mid 2017, the federal ministry of power, works and housing said on Monday.
This was contained in a communiqué issued at the end of the 6th monthly meeting between Babatunde Fashola, the minister, with operators of the Nigerian power sector, held Monday, June 13 at the Kumbotso Transmission Station in Kano.
The operators were represented at the highest executive management levels, including managing directors and CEOs of electricity generating companies (Gencos), distribution companies (Discos), and the Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN).
Also present were various government agencies such as NNPC, Niger Delta Power Holding Company (NDPHC), the Nigerian Bulk Electricity Trading Company Plc (NBET), the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC) and the Nigerian Electricity Management Services Agency (NEMSA) responsible for the regulation and development of the electricity industry.
“The projects to be completed by NPDC will improve gas supply to power plants over the next few months through September 30 2016 and it is estimated that the increase in gas supply to power plants will increase generation capacity by approximately 2000 MW by the middle of 2017,” said Hakeem Bello, special adviser to the minister on communications, in a statement made available to BusinessDay.
A total of 855 mmsfcd is expected to be added to the domestic gas supply in the short term of which about 70 percent is sent to power plants for use in generation, the statement further read in part.
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.
Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN), on its part, reported the completion of 20 projects since the last meeting.
The projects are in Gwagwalada, Kaduna, Afam, Apo, Lekki and Omotosho and their completion is expected to improve power distribution in Abuja and Lagos.
TCN also expressed commitment to restore power to Maiduguri, Borno State’s Capital in the next month after a long period of outage, as well as the need to shut down the 300mw Okpai power plant so that a tower which was earlier vandalised can be repaired to restore a 55km transmission line.
The hydroelectric power stations (Kainji, Jebba and Shiroro) agreed to work with TCN to boost output during the two-week outage period to minimize the effect of the outage.
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.
The meeting recognized the need for the Discos to reinvigorate their efforts to replace obsolete transformers and deploy new ones where necessary so that communities are not required to provide transformers at their own expense in order to get service they are prepared to pay for.
The meeting also deliberated on safety rankings presented by NERC and NEMSA (the regulators) which will henceforth be circulated monthly.
The Port Harcourt Disco was commended for ranking first in safety in the month of May.
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