…moves to complete Ododiyan transmission substation
The federal government on Wednesday explained why the power situation in the country has worsened in the past few weeks.
This was disclosed by the minister of power, works and housing, Babatunde Fashola after the federal executive council meeting presided over by the acting President, Yemi Osinbajo at the Presidential Villa. According to him, lack of funds is one of the major reasons as gas suppliers have not been fully paid and also some issues with the discos and gencos.
Fashola said, “We heard there was liquidity problems, gas suppliers haven’t been fully paid you have back and forth between DisCos and GenCos so those are the issues.
“Apart from the sabotage that we have had from the Western axis of the Niger Delta, so the Escravos Lagos pipeline is not operational, the Forcados export terminal too has been out of operation, so if you can’t produce oil you cant take the gas. the gas is the fuel that the power plants need.
“You have seen what we have been doing in increasing the capacity in firing transmission but if we don’t have fuel to fire the plants, that is the reason.
Fashola further explained that what happens on the grid is that once it goes below 3,000 MW, it becomes unstable and so once it falls below a certain threshold then there are trip -offs to protect the entire system.
According to him,while they were trying to start last week, they had a fire in Afam and that affected the control room and these are normal engineering accidents
that can happen, the mechanical parts can break down.
He said they also had another fire in Kainji and have tried to repair them over the last weekend while negotiations with the gas companies are ongoing.
Fashola further stated that he has been meeting with the gas suppliers, trying to see how they can pay off some of these debts whilst fix other problems.
He remarked ;As I continue to say, it is not technical but financial, vandalism of pipelines is not technical, people are destroying, they are hungry.
“Until we resolve these behavioural issues, people collect money are they remitting everything in a manner that is fair, even if it is not enough, some people hold up their own share and they ask themselves why should we continue to supply if we cant get paid because there are bankers and financiers? so we are talking with everybody trying to resolve it.
“As at yesterday we were back to 2900, so we are building up back again and very soon you will see some stability. These are set backs on the road to incremental power but we will overcome them.
Meanwhile ,Fashola said the council approved the completion of Ododiyan transmission substation in Ikorodu, Lagos and also provide additional transformer capacity at the substation 260 MVA transformers and transmission lines of 132KVA.
He recalled that in previous briefings the strategy was incremental power in a short while and that is what his ministry is addressing- expanding the transmission and improving generation.
According to him, this approval was to help his ministry complete the works in that area generally known within the power industry as Ayobo West.
He said the contract had been awarded before now but not completed because it wasn’t paid for recalling that It was awarded in 2009 and should have been completed in 18 months which would have been sometimes in May 2011, but because of lack of funding nothing happened.
“That is the approval we got today and of course the cost has been revised as a result of the economic realities so that this can be completed and put to use and this would add to the expansion capacity to the grid, just as what we have done in Kaduna and previous approvals that we have shared with you.
The initial contract I think was N3.225billion or there about, the revision that has been approved is N274.3million to complete it, so it goes from about N3.2 to N3.5million,” he stated
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