Gas Supply For Power Generation Drops By 28%

Domestic gas supply to power generating plants recorded a plunge of 186 million standard cubic feet per day in August.

Latest data from the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation showed that the supply of gas to thermal power plants dropped from a high of 854mmscfd in March 2018 to as low as 668mmscfd in August.

This also led to a reduction in the quantum of energy generated by the power plants.

An analysis of data obtained from the national oil firm in Abuja on Friday showed that the 186mmscfd decline in gas supply to the plants led to an equivalent decline of 982 megawatts of electricity that would have been generated on the country’s power grid.

Findings showed that when gas supply to power plants was 854mmscfd in March, the equivalent power generated from the power plants was 3,492MW.

This, however, dropped to 2,510MW in August when gas supply to the plants dropped by 27.8 per cent, compared to March.

The corporation stated that “a total of 668mmscfd was delivered to the gas-fired power plants in August 2018 to generate an average power of about 2,510MW compared with July, when an average of 745mmscfd was supplied to generate 2,898MW.”

It added that national gas production in August stood at 251.44 billion cubic feet, translating to an average daily production of 8,381.29mmscfd.

“This represents 9.16 per cent increase, compared to the previous month,” the corporation stated.

This is coming as the Chairman, Green Energy International Limited, Anthony Adegbulugbe, has stated that the usefulness and opportunities that abound in the gas sector were enormous.

Adegbulugbe, who spoke at the just-concluded African Marginal and Independent Oil and Gas Producers conference in London, said his firm, from the beginning, was positioned as an integrated energy company determined to use the gas produced from the Otakikpo marginal field in Oil Mining Lease 11 for Liquefied Petroleum Gas and power generation.

In his keynote address on ‘Financial sustainability and efficiency of marginal field operations’, he said his firm had secured the Federal Government’s licence to construct the LPG plant.

According to a statement from the firm, the plant is currently being manufactured in China.

He said gas generators, with capacity of 6MW, were on site for the first phase of the gas-to-power project to provide electricity to the adjoining host communities, while the balance of the power would be wheeled to an industrial park being facilitated to attract industries in need of uninterrupted power.

Adegbulugbe further told operators of marginal oil and gas fields that the sustainability of players in the sector in Africa depended on their ability to leverage other unique opportunities in the oil and gas business beyond upstream activities.

He noted that the uncertainties in the crude oil business environment had imposed serious sustainability challenges on the small oil producers and that these could only be addressed through integrated energy development approach.

Source: punch