BUSINESS Egbin plant invests N7.3bn on rehabilitation

Egbin Power Station Plc has invested N7.3 billion for rehabilitation of the plant between November 1, 2013 when it was handed over to the new investors and now.

But the company said it lost N8.134 per kilowatt hour to gas shortage which amounted to a whooping sum of N5.6 billion per annum.

Mr Mike Uzoigwe, Chief Executive Officer of the plant, disclosed this during the oversight function of the House of Representatives Committee on Privatisation and Commercialisation to Ikeja and Egbin Power Station, Lagos.

He explained that the new owners of the power plant hoped to reduce the losses while achieving 85 per cent availability and 34 per cent efficiency.

He said the new owners, with the help of their technical partners, Korea Electrical Power Nigeria Limited, were working to address some of the challenges facing the plant.

Uzoigwe said that the total capacity of the power plant is 1,320MW, while the available and dependable capacity stood at 1,080MW with one of its six units out for over eight years.

In view of this, the CEO announced a six-pronged major overhauling of the power plant over the next two years with each of them costing N5 billion.

According to him, the overhauling of unit 1 has been scheduled for March, 2015; Unit 2, October 2015; Unit 3, July 2015; Unit 4, October, 2014; Unit 5, January, 2016 and Unit 6, April, 2016.

“All together, N30 billion would be spent on rehabilitating the plant,” he said.

Uzoigwe, however, said despite injecting $18.3 billion of power into the national grid, the market operator has delayed its payment and this was affecting its operation.

He said: “The invoice sent to the market operator by Egbin is N187.3 billion but the total cash we should have gotten from the market operator for power generated for the past five months is N13.16 billion.

“We have only gotten N6.5billion, we owed the Nigeria Gas Company N5.3billion, while our operation cost till date is N13 billion. N573 million was lost between November 2013 and now.

“The challenge of inadequate gas supply is huge and what we have been receiving in terms of allocation has reduced significantly from 900MW before the handing over to barely 300MW as we speak.”

He said that the power situation has been grossly affected by the activities of vandals on NNPC pipelines and incessant vandalism of our facilities and installation.

The Chairman of the committee, Mrs Khadija Ibrahim, said the committee has visited Shiroro Hydro power plant and four other Distribution companies.

Khadija, who decried the gas shortage to power plants in the country, gave an assurance that the lawmakers would support the industry with the right legislation.

She said the lawmakers would ensure the speedy passage of the Petroleum Industry Bill.