*BPE now free to conclude plants sale, escrow $10.1 million to operate PPAs
Oscarline Onwuemenyi
30 December 2013, Abuja – The Nigerian Bulk Electricity Trading Plc, NBET has signed a Power Purchase Agreements, PPAs, with the 335MW Olorunsogo and 335MW Omotosho power plants.
By this agreement, the Federal government is to formally stop its repayment of the 60 per cent worth of financial loans partly used in the construction of both plants by a Chinese consortium beginning with the Olorunshogo plant.
Government had in line with its ongoing power sector diversification programme ceded both plants which are located in Olorunsogo, Ogun state and Okitipupa, Ondo state respectively to the Chinese consortia of Sepco Electric Power Construction Corporation of China for Olorunsogo and China National Machinery and Equipment Import and Export Corporation, CMEC, for Omotosho; both consortia are in partnership with indigenous company, Pacific Energy.
The consortia was designated as preferred bidders for the plants following their agreement to convert the loan into equity for the purchase of the companies and also in consideration that the 60 per cent Chinese loan for the construction of the plants was provided through them as contractors for the projects.
Managing Director of NBET, Mr. Rumundaka Wonodi who disclosed at the signing of the PPA with Olorunsogo power plant in Abuja, explained that the PPA now grants the government the freedom from repayment of interests on the loan.
Wonodi who also explained that the signing ceremony was overseen by the Minister of Power, Chinedu Nebo and Permanent Secretary in the ministry, Godknows Igali, noted that the final process now grants the Bureau of Public Enterprises (BPE) the freedom to conclude its sale of the plants and escrow about $10.1 million of proceeds from the sales to a designated bank for the operation of the PPAs.
“The Federal government made investment in two power plants built with equity of 40 per cent respectively in the Omotosho and Olorunsogo power plants while 60 per cent loan was from the Chinese. In the last couple of years, the federal government decided to divest from this assets by having the Chinese convert their loan to equity and at the same time pipe down the government’s contribution.
“The net effect is that the Chinese is paying for the balance of what government had invested less some certain costs; some of those costs are related to the transmission infrastructure because transmission cannot be held within the power plant, any investment in transmission is handed to the Transmission Company of Nigeria, TCN.
“As part of that transaction, there needs to be a power purchase agreement to be put in place, also a gas supply agreement which was executed when all the other industry agreements were executed, the outstanding one is the PPAs.
“With the PPA signed, it will allow the investors led by Pacific Energy with Sepco in Olorunsogo and Pacific Energy with CMEC for Omotosho to go ahead with the rest of the transaction.
“The tariff has been approved by the regulator as well as the PPA and this allows us to conclude it and allow BPE to conclude the transaction for the balance of payment to be made to the government; also the loan stops to run because if we don’t conclude the PPA, we have to continue to make interests payments but once we conclude this, everything freezes and they make the supplementary payment, ” he added.
Wonodi stressed that the PPAs “allows us to get closer to the declaration of Transitional Electricity Market, TEM, because all electricity supplied must come under a contract. The board of the Bulk Trader has also approved the PPA and its signing.
“One of the things you can count on from this is the availability of capacity as it is required; with the PPA, the company can commit better to gas supply and usually what happened was that things were done on best endeavour basis but with this, the power plant has a back-to-back gas supply reliability which it can also trigger and there will be more reliability of power supplied from these power plants.
“One other component of this agreement is that part of the money that will be paid by the investors, about $10.1 million will be escrowed in a bank to support the PPA just like it is done in the privatisation where parts of proceeds from the sale was escrowed in favour of the generation companies, this was the model that was proposed by the BPE for liquidity of the market.
“It is a negotiated PPA as opposed to the one that was signed in the privatisation; in this case, there are payments that needed to be made, valuation of assets and ancillaries; there was also the need to cut out transmission and put the gas supply firmly in place. The financial structure is slightly different because what it is turning out to now is that you are converting debt into equity, it is an all equity arrangement,”
