Nigeria Losses N112m Daily To Gas Line Breaks
million standard cubic feet (mscf) for natural gas to
Nigeria's electricity industry, gas suppliers in the
country may be losing an average of N112,000,000
($560,000) daily revenue on deferment of gas
production and supplies to power plants due to
pipeline breaks.
On the average, the amount of revenue lost from
incessant breaks on the country's network of natural
gas pipeline varies depending on the end users.
The Nigerian Gas Company (NGC), the gas
transportation arm of the Nigerian National
Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), however said that an
average of 200 million standard cubic feet (mscf) of
natural gas production and supply was lost each time
its Escravos-Lagos Pipeline System (ELPS) was
sabotaged at any of its points.
NGC stated on Friday in Warri, shortly after
inspecting a recent break at the Inikorogha
community axis of its ELPS where vandals blew up a
section of the line early Monday morning, that
between January and March, it had recorded three
breaks on the same line.
It said that at each occasion, a minimum of 200mscf
of gas supply to power plants was lost, resulting to a
loss of 1500 megawatts (MW) of electricity generation
by generation companies.
By calculation, it will take NGC a minimum of two
weeks to repair the recent break at Inikorogha,
meaning that the line could be down for three weeks
and an approximately N2.3 billion of potential
revenue from gas production and supplies on the
line lost.
In addition, the NGC could also spend an average of
N150 million to repair the line, going by its average
expenditure on repairs of similar breaks on the ELPS.
Briefing reporters after the pipeline inspection at
Inikorogha, the Executive Director Services of NGC,
Joseph Olisa stated that the frequency of breaks on
the ELPS had prompted stakeholders to initiate
severe actions against the development.
"We are hurting and pained by the recent level of
vandalism done to the pipeline, it has in several
ways affected us negatively in trying to achieve our
set objectives.
I must also tell you that we have had several
engagements with the stakeholders and communities
and about a week ago, we had meetings where we
brought in all the communities in Delta State and we
had a fruitful meeting on this," Olisa said.
He further noted that: "We are also engaging specific
communities, we had another meeting with the
leaders and youth from Gbaramatu kingdom and
from the commitment we got from them we will have
a better relationship going forward."
Similarly, the Acting Executive Director Operation of
NGC, Gabriel Aggrey in his presentation on the
development, said: "The truth is that we have been
having vandalism reports, but the spate at which it
has bolstered into is now is alarming."
"In the past few weeks we have really had it so badly
that it is impacting negatively on power generation in
the country,. Remember that the core fuel to most of
the power plant in this country is gas, so if we cannot
take gas to the power plant, generation suffers".
The bleep you have seen recently in power
generation and supply in the country has to do with
this vandalism," he stated.
Aggrey added that: "Recently we have had three
major attacks in the past few weeks. Between January
and now we have had three major attacks on our
ELPS that takes gas from Escravos up to Lagos and
beyond and this pipeline is the heart beat of or the
core of pipelines that takes gas to the western part of
the country.
"One happened at Ubefan in January and in February
we have another one at Batan and most recently last
Monday we have this blast at Inikorogha in
Gbaramotu Kingdom."
"When these pipelines are tampered with, the gas
volume that is supposed to be sent to customers is
lost and whenever it happens we lose up to 1.5
Gigawatts of electricity to the national grid and that is
colossal in terms of cost and volume of almost 200
million which is lost".
He also noted that the Joint Military Taskforce had
arrested four community members who may be
linked with the recent break at Inikorogha.
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