Nigeria may lose 1,200MW of electricity this year if the contractor handling three key National Integrated Power Projects fails to meet stipulated targets that would ensure the commissioning of these plants by the third quarter of 2014, the Presidential Task Force on Power has said.
Although the PTFP had given marching orders to the contractor, Messers Rockson Engineering Limited, it explained that unless these projects were commissioned and put into commercial use, the country’s target of 6,000MW by December this year might not be realised.
It was gathered that the Chairman, PTFP, Beks Dagogo-Jack, had chaired a meeting with the contractor executing critical generation and transmission projects located in the eastern axis of the national gas grid for the NIPP.
Dagogo-Jack said the meeting focused on three power generation projects located at Alaoji in Abia State, Omoku in Rivers State, and Gbarain in Bayelsa State.
He noted that a major transmission project which provides the key evacuation corridor for wheeling power from these power plants to connect to the national grid at Onitsha was also handled by the same contractor.
He said, “Accordingly, unless these projects are commissioned and put into commercial operations by the end of quarter three this year, we shall suffer a serious shortfall in our power supply projections by as much as 1,200MW.
“This will significantly impact our set national on-grid supply target threshold of 6,000MW by December 2014.”
Dagogo-Jack explained to the contractor the critical importance of the subject projects to the overall power growth projections of the Federal Government.
He said while there were acute gas constraints in the western axis of the gas grid, there were currently some appreciable gas volumes on the eastern axis awaiting the completion of these eastern power plants.
The PTFP boss said the key elements which had caused previous slippage were reviewed, adding that the contractor committed to submitting detailed updated work plans with their critical path dependencies properly highlighted for each of the affected projects to the presidential task force within a week.
According to him, the task force extracted a clear commitment from all concerned to work closely together to ensure that the new work plan delivers all the projects on schedule without any further significant slippage.
Dagogo-Jack informed that the PTFP would monitor the realisation of the expected new work plan very closely until it was delivered and would not hesitate to escalate reports to appropriate quarters if need be.
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