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The federal
government yesterday said it now has sufficient gas to generate power
stations, so Nigerians should look out for an improvement in the
sector.

Speaking after a
closed door meeting of the presidential committee on power, the
spokesman of the acting president, Imo Niboro, said the group is moving
forward on the issue of power.

This is coming as
Shell Petroleum Development Company (SPDC) of Nigeria Limited Joint
Venture has signed a multi-million dollar pipeline contract that will
enable it supply more gas to power stations in the country. The SPDC,
in a statement on Wednesday, said it signed the contract with Daewoo
Nigeria Limited, on April 27, in Port Harcourt.

According to the
statement, the contract will involve the construction of pipelines that
will take gas from SPDC’s operated fields at Utorogu, Adibawa and
Agbada to the domestic gas network owned and operated by the Nigerian
Gas Company. The aggregate length of pipelines covered by the contract
scope is 90 kilometres.

Repositioning the sector

Mr. Niboro said in
Abuja that the closed door meeting was one of the strategic meetings
being held to re-position the power sector.

“The petroleum
minister gave us some good news that we now have a sufficient gas to
power our traditional power stations. So that will lead to some
considerable improvement in power in the next few months.

“We also looked at
the issue of hydro-power, which dot’s most part s of the north and
south west. Many of them are structurally completed, what is required
is the turbines and we looked at those issues and we are going to make
sure that those turbines are put in place so that in the next few
months, they can be up and running. ”

He added that the
increase in gas is one of the gains of the amnesty process. “If you
follow the trends, there have been fewer disruptions in production
processes and that has brought gas into the system,” he said. l

Pioneering gas supply

Speaking at the gas
signing ceremony, Mutiu Sunmonu, SPDC managing director, said: “This
project is of high importance to us as a company and also to the
nation. Electricity is key to national development, and we are pleased
to increase our capacity to supply more gas to power stations, in
addition to other efforts we are making.

On completion of
the project by the end of next year, the pipelines are expected to
deliver some 250 million standard cubic feet of gas per day to the
domestic gas supply system.

The SPDC Joint
Venture pioneered gas supply to industries in Nigeria in the 1960s, and
still supplies over 75 per cent of the domestic gas market, mainly for
power generation, and continues to increase its contribution.

In 2008, SPDC began
producing electricity from the newly-built Afam VI power plant,
increasing Nigeria’s electricity capacity by about 15-20 per cent.

The plant is powered by gas from SPDC’s Okoloma gas plant, which
opened in 2008 and has the capacity to increase the nation’s gas supply
by approximately 20 per cent.