(Quick News Africa)- Given the availability of sufficient gas to power it, the federal government said at the weekend that the Afam Thermal Power Plant in Port Harcourt, Rivers State, deliver 340 megawatts of electricity to the national grid will before December 2017.
Babatunde Fashola, minister of power, works and housing, who disclosed at the weekend, said with the work on the 240 megawatt capacity Afam III Plant at advanced stages and the burnt transformer for the 100 megawatt Afam 1V now repaired, the two should deliver on the combined 340 megawatts target.
Interacting with newsmen after inspecting the power station, Fashola explained that all of the turbines and equipment needed for the completion of Afam III were already in the country, and that only the provision of access roads and logistics to the project site were left.
“What we have behind us is the Afam III and that is the Fast Power Programme in collaboration with General Electric to restore 240 megawatts to that place. All of the turbines and equipment needed for that project are already in Nigeria, so the only challenge we have now is roads, logistics and a few other problems, and those are the things I have come to assess here,” the minister explained.
Before now, power from the plant could not be evacuated due to the damaged transformer that got burnt in January 2015.
On the steps taken so far by government to solve the gas issue, Fashola said the Buhari-led government inherited a lot of debts owed to all the gas companies who, according to him, said they would no longer supply gas without payment.
The government recently approved N701 billion under its Payment Assurance Programme to ensure that all suppliers of gas to the nation’s power plants were paid.
“So we are telling Shell to let us separate the previous debt and create a programme to deal with it under the Central Bank of Nigeria programme,” the minister disclosed.
According to him, “we have already paid for power produced in January; we have got approval to pay for power produced in February because the bills come in arrears. So they are looking at that and they will come back to us, so hopefully we should add another 100 megawatts to the grid from here (Afam 1V) very soon.”
