By Musa Adamu
Abuja
The Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC) has been assured by the Nigerian Agip Oil Company (NAOC) that it was committed to start work on the second phase of its Okpai Power Plant in Delta state.
The power plant presently generates 480megawatts to the national grid.
The Managing Director of the multinational oil company, Massimo Insulla, gave the commitment for the second phase following a request from the commission.
Assuring on the company’s willingness to investment more in the power sector, the managing director thanked the Commission for the efforts at issuing the licence to his company.
He further assured: “We are ready for the second phase. Agip is committed to working in compliance with NERC rules and regulations. We shall work without compromising integrity of the assets and in line with the rules and regulations.”
The assurance was necessitated by the commission Chairman, Dr. Sam Amadi, who demanded that Agip must do more than what was doing in the power sector,since did not have gas supply challenge, being an oil producing company.
Amadi on his part, assured that the Commission would do everything within its area of influence to ensure that investors in power generation will not suffer loss on their investments.
Issuing the licence to NAOC he said: “We know Agip can deliver more. You do not have gas problem. We are looking forward to your delivering more power to the national grid.
Okpai power plant is a joint venture investment of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), NAOC, Philips Oil Company Limited and was constructed in line with a power purchase agreement signed on July 24, 2001 with the then National Electricity Power Authority (NEPA) prior to the enactment of the Electric Power Sector Reform Act 2005, which establishes NERC.
Okpai power plant started operations on April 1, 2005 and has since being delivering 480MW to the national grid.
