As part of the three-year economic recovery plan, the federal government says it has geared up eff orts to complete major gas infrastructure lines to plants and main trunk lines to facilitate gas supply for power generation.
Accordingly, through the newly launched National Economic Recover y and Growth Plan (NERGP), the government plans to restore lost gas supply through the Gas Flare Commercialisation Programme. President Muhammadu Buhari stated this while launching the NERGP at the State House noting that it has adopted a strategy to elimination of gas infrastructure vandalism as well as improves the financial capability of the Nigerian Bulk Electricity Trading Plc (NBET) to support the electricity market.
The government observed that improvement in gas fl are programme was necessary because of incessant complaints by power generation and distribution companies that lack of the essential commodity was impeding on its activities.
Accordingly, the said it noted with concern GENCOs and DISCOs’ constraints from gas supplies to power plants and low level of water at the hydro stations which cumulatively led to drop to 2,785MW of generation volume from the system, leaving the country with just about 3,653.8MW of electricity to distribute across the 11 distribution networks.
Expressing optimism on the end gas to gas flaring in the country, the government said it was resolute as it had designed a National Gas Policy to end gas fl aring by 2020. Already, the government said it had been circulated the National Gas Policy to all operators to guide them on the direction of the government with regard to how it wants the nation’s abundant gas resources deployed.
In the same vein, the president informed that the federal government has provided a guarantee of payment to gas suppliers through the Central Bank of Nigeria and the World Bank three weeks ago as part of incentives to get the oil and gas companies to commercialize more of their gas.
President Buhari, therefore, assured that the economic recovery programme would strengthen the governance framework and capacity of sector agencies, introduce strategy for capital market and banking programmes that ensure all upstream industry operators get paid for each contract, and review the gas pricing structure to recover all prudent costs as services improve and give willing developers access to underdeveloped gas resources.
Blueprint newspaper notes that average power generation as at April 05, 2017, was 3,441MW, but improved to 3,653.8MW last weekend. Th e reported gas and water constraints were 2,695MW and 90MW respectively, while no constraints from the transmission lines were recorded. Th e government’s record also stated that the power sector lost an estimated N1.337 billion on April 05, 2017 due to these constraints.
