By Adewale Sanyaolu
The Managing Director of Egbin Power Plc, Mr. Mokhtar Bounour, has raised the alarm that gas shortages and the N1.4 trillion power generation debt owed the firm by the Federal Government through its agency, Nigeria Bulk Electricity Trader, has crashed its generation capacity to 433MW from its installed capacity of over 1,000MW.
Bounour disclosed this on the sidelines of the working visit of the Minister of Power, Mr. Adebayo Adelabu, to firm’s power generation plant in Egbin, Ikorodu, Lagos, yesterday.
He said if the debt is not liquidated as soon as possible, the continued sustenance of the power plant could be under threat.
He, however, assured that the management of the company would continue to strive to ensure that it continues to wheel out power
He worried that the huge debt profile has led to loss of revenue for the company due to its inability to generate power at optimal capacity,
The power expert equally highlighted the negative impact of unavailability of gas on its operations, saying this has led to huge revenue loss for the company due to its inability to generate power at optimal capacity.
Bounour stated that the quantity of gas supplied to power plant is grossly inadequate to fire the six units.
‘‘You’l’ see that we are only running on four units because we don’t have gas. We have been receiving calls from the gas suppliers that they have challenges. We are working around the clock to ensure that we get gas to fire our turbines,’’ Bounour said.
He noted that the 40-year old power plant requires lots of efforts and investments to keep the units running because failure to generate will create a lot of imbalance along the power sector value chain.
Despite the challenges, he said Egbin plant has continued to invest in upgrade of its facilities and units for the continued running of the power plant.
The Minister, however, assured that the Federal Government was on top of the situation and that by next month, it would start offsetting the debt.
Adelabu further assured that issues around gas constraints to power plants was equally receiving attention and that all encumbrances leading to gas shortages would be addressed.
The Minister acknowledged that the Federal Government owes power generating companies a lot of money, saying Egbin power plants tops the list.
‘‘We don’t want the debt to cripple the operations of power plants because they’ve been magnanimous enough to continue open-ended operations, otherwise they could have pack up. So, FG is prioritising drawing down on the outstanding debt and I have assured the management that effective April, we will start paying the money to serve as a form of incentive and encouragement to continue to have them in operation,” he said.
He said one of the major reasons for his visit to the firm is to establish areas of collaboration with the power plant in order to see how the power plant could support the mission and vision of the Ministry .
‘‘Our success is highly dependent on the success of the key stakeholders in the sector of which the power plants is a major stakeholder. As a leading generating plant which is the largest in sub-Saharan Africa, I am quite impressed with what I see here. The turbines are operational, the staff are wonderful, very innovative and creative. The management are quite committed and passionate about the business and I can say I am proud to be a Nigeria when I got here,” he said.