Darkness in Nigeria Worsens as Vandalism Cuts Gas Shortages

 Darkness in Nigeria Worsens as Vandalism Cuts Gas Shortages

The epileptic supply of electricity across the country has persisted as vandalism of pipelines has prolonged the perennial shortage of gas to the thermal power plants, it was learnt.

This is coming as the System and Market Operation Departments of the Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN) on Monday explained why Nigeria’s current electricity generation has remained quite low in recent weeks, blaming the situation on gas shortages to the generation plants in the south of the country.

TCN also explained that each time the country's electricity generation falls below 3,500 megawatts (MW), there will be little power in the dedicated spinning reserve, hence the possibility of transmission system collapse.

It was gathered that the country has witnessed persisted power outages in recent weeks after the much-celebrated all-time peak of 5,074 megawatts of electricity generation on February 2, 2016, following months of honeymoon enjoyed by the administration of President Muhammadu Buhari with respect to pipeline vandalism.

Investigation revealed that recent attacks on crude oil and gas pipelines may have signalled the end of the honeymoon and ushered in a period of darkness witnessed in recent weeks, as vandalism of gas pipelines disrupted supply of feedstock to gas-fired power generating plants, which account for over 78 per cent of power supply in the country.

The situation had worsened last Thursday when the whole country was plunged into darkness due to a nationwide system collapse.

The Chief Executive Officer of one of the electricity distribution companies told journalists today that during last Thursday’s system disturbance, the 11 distribution companies were only “on station supply” where they could not service their customers.

“When you are on station supply, there is no power to give to your customers. This is because some power plants went down due to non-supply of gas. The only power you get from the national grid when you are on station supply sis what you will use to run your base radio. You can’t send it to customers,” the CEO, who opted not to be quoted, said.

He also blamed weak transmission network for the country’s current power woes, saying that only a super grid would solve the country’s transmission challenges.

“Transmission will continue to be a problem until the country has super transmission grid. Super transmission grid is a model transmission line that can take huge power. We need to construct super grid to reduce system collapse,” he added.

But a top official of the Nigeria Electricity System Operator told journalists that vandalism was responsible for the current drop in power supply.

“Gas pipelines have been vandalised and they are doing it continuously. Some plants went down last week because of lack of gas and it caused system collapse. So, it is really not a transmission problem,” said the official.

Also a Chief Executive Officer of one of the oil and gas exploration and production (E &P) company, who did not want to be quoted, told the media that the that the current poor power situation was caused by vandalism of the Forcados pipeline.