*Chevron’s Escravos gas plant to experience 72 hours outage
Oscarline Onwuemenyi
03 April 2013, Sweetcrude, Abuja – Parts of the country will experience power blackout for three days as the Chevron Escravos Gas Plant is to be shut down due to a scheduled gas outage to facilitate additional gas supply.
Meanwhile, the Presidential Task Force on Power, PTFP, said it is coordinating with Chevron, Nigerian Gas Company, NGC, the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) and the Transmission Company of Nigeria, TCN, to ensure that the scheduled gas outage at the Chevron Escravos Gas plant from Friday April 5 – 7, 2013 will be executed with minimal disruption to the supply of electricity in the country.
The outage is scheduled for the tie-in of additional gas supply from the plant. As part of the mitigating plan, transmission line maintenance in the Lagos area will also be conducted in tandem to avoid sequential outages.
The Chairman of the PTFP, Engr. Beks Dagogo-Jack, in a statement made available to our correspondent in Abuja, on Wednesday stated that the outage will take about 800 megawatts out of service during the three day period.
The outage is also inclusive of the Shell Afam VI scheduled maintenance which contributes about 200 megawatts to the power shortfall. “The PTFP is coordinating with the relevant project owners to further mitigate the effect of the expected power shortfall.”
He added that scheduled maintenance operations of this nature are normal in ensuring that power supply is sustained in the long term. Explaining further, Dagogo-Jack likened the maintenance exercise to the periodic servicing of a vehicle.
“In order to get the desired level of service reliability even basic machines like our cars must be maintained at determined intervals not to talk of power plants,” he said.
The Chairman also stated that the benefits of this culture of disciplined maintenance far outweigh the cost of a two to three day inconvenience in reduced supply. He promised that with increased generation, future planned maintenance would have minimal impact on supply.
Engr. Dagogo-Jack asked for the support and understanding of Nigerians during this unavoidable period of shortage assuring the public that in spite of the daunting challenges on the way this Government’s determination to transform our power sector remains a top priority.
