24 April 2012, Sweetcrude Abuja – The 12-month Gas-to Power Emergency Supply Plan announced last week by the Minister of Petroleum Resources is expected to start yielding results in the next few weeks as 500mmcf/d of gas will be made available to the Nigerian Independent Power Plant, NIPP, to generate about 2000MW of electricity.
The Minister of Petroleum Resources, Mrs Diezani Alison-Madueke, made this disclosure on Monday at a press briefing in Abuja where she explained that the emergency plan was the first concerted effort to address the absence of alignment between the NIPP’s and the necessary gas supply to power them since 2005 when they were conceptualized.
Throwing more light on the 500mmcf/d of gas to be made available to NIPP, Alison-Madueke said that 180mmcf/d of gas will come from Escravos, Utorogu, Ughelli and Oredo.
“Ongoing activities such as the laying of the Olorunshogo pipeline, the completion of the Escravos Lagos Pipeline System A and the completion of the NIPP pipeline around Oredo are key elements of this addition. These projects are all in advanced stages and should be completed within the next few weeks,” she explained.
Apart from the 180mmcf/d of gas to be delivered in the next few weeks to the NIPP, Alison-Madueke said the balance of 320mmcf/d (equivalent of 1300MW) will be delivered over the next 12 months.
“As you know, new plants are continually coming on stream. In addition to the 180mmcf/d above, a further 320mmcf/d will be delivered and deployed to these plants over the next 12 months,” she said.
To meet the target, she said the emergency plan will leverage on the excess processing capacity in PanOcean to process gas that will be rerouted from Oredo by Nigerian Petroleum Development Company, NPDC ; access additional gas at Escravos, and expand the Utorogu Hub, adding that “with these interventions new plants at Ihovor, Omotosho and Geregu NIPP’s will receive significant boost in gas supply”.
The minister said she has directed the contractor handling the ELPS Phase 2 to immediately deploy additional resources to accelerate the expansion of the pipeline from Oben to Lagos and to deploy pragmatic contracting strategy to enable expedited procurement of critical items like line pipes.
She said the critical intervention would require additional funding which is being sourced through government’s public/private partnership funding initiative.
Earlier in the day, the minister and her counterpart in the Ministry of Power, Prof Barth Nnaji, had constituted an 11-man made up of officials from the Ministry of Petroleum and Ministry Power to align the NIPP’s with gas supply.
Members of the committee include: Toyin Olagunju, Saidu Mohammed, Edwin Udezi, Tolu Lukanbi, O. Ajisafe and S.A. Babalola (all from the Petroleum Resources Ministry).
Others are: Engrs. Dagogo Jack, Clement Oke, Simeon Adakulu, Chike Madueke and Luis Edozien (all from the Ministry of Power).
It would be recalled that last week, Mrs Alison-Madueke announced a 12-month gas emergency plan to address the challenge of gas supply to power plants.
