By ABAH SUNDAY, Abuja
The Niger Delta Power Holding Company (NDPHC) has assured that the Gbarain Power Plant will resume generation soon.
The company’s managing director, Mr Chiedu Ugbo, gave the assurance Tuesday while addressing members of the House of Representatives Committee on Power who were on an oversight visit to the plant, according to a statement.
Located in Koroama, Yenagoa, Bayelsa State, Gbarain, with a capacity of at least 252 megawatts (MW) of power, is one of several projects under the National Integrated Power Project (NIPP) being managed by NDPHC, which have been deemed “critical infrastructure in the generation, transmission, distribution and natural gas supply sub-sectors of the electric power value chain” by the federal government.
Ugbo maintained that cash flow constraint was the major issue that delayed the resuscitation of the Power Control Module (PCM) that got burnt.
According to him, when he came on board in 2016, Gbarain Power Plant was still a construction site.
“We had to put a unit to the grid and unfortunately the temporary power control module put in place got burnt. But at the time it happened, we had a more pressing threat to the community which was the pipeline laid before 2015 that was being washed away by River Nun.
“It got to a point when the pipeline was dangling on top of the river and no responsible management would ignore such tremendous threat to the host community.
“This was the first site I visited after I resumed as managing director. There was a procurement for reinforcement of the 1.5 kilometre gas pipeline from Shell facility to this place. It was on the bank of River Nun. We shut down the plant, made sure we fixed that pipeline by doing a horizontal direction, burying it many metres away.
“We couldn’t take the two capital intensive projects together because of our financial limitations. Right now, we are being owed close to N200 billion because as the NBET (Nigerian Bulk Electricity Trading PLC) is paying, it is accumulating more.
“Right now, we have completed the pipeline project, and the entire community is now safe. It is now time to confront the PCM issues and we have informed the original equipment manufacturer, Scheider, and have done the procurement.
“But to fast-track the resuscitation of Gbarain, we are moving one from one of our sites and replacing it with the one that will be purchased.
“However, all the engineering and gas assets being well preserved, and the plant is obviously well maintained. It was just coincidental that the resolution was tabled otherwise, we were already well on the way to fixing the problem,” the NDPHC boss explained.
On the date that the PCM would be fixed, Ugbo said being an engineering issue, it would be difficult to mention a particular date immediately.
He assured the member representing Yenagoa, Okpokuma Federal Constituency, Mr. Ofoji, that the company’s team will sit with representatives of Bayelsa State Government and agree on timelines to bring the equipment and install it.
NDPHC is incorporated under the Companies and Allied Matters Act as a private limited liability company with shareholding fully subscribed to by the federal, state, and local governments with a mandate to manage the NIPP.