Gas supply challenges for GENCOS responsible for power shortage- Minister

Minister of State for Power, Jerry Agba on wednesday explained that challenges still associated with power shortages is as a result of gas supply issues, especially with Generation Companies (GENCOS).
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Agba gave the explanations after the Federal Executive Council meeting presided over by President Muhammadu Buhari at the Presidential Villa Abuja.

He noted that negotiations were on with the Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC Ltd) to augment gas supplies to distributors at local rate.

His explanation came against the backdrop of power shortages experienced in the country despite billions of naira injected into the sector by the outgoing administration.

He said with the interventions being put in place, power stability was bound to come in few days.

“You’ll agree with me that of late, we’ve had problems with gas supplies for generational companies. We just negotiated with the gas supply companies, NNPC limited to augment gas supplies to distributors at the going local rate.
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“Gas was sold to them at export rate, whose price differs and the collection is made on domestic rates. So there was a differential and the argument, however, we had an agreement with the NNPCL and natural gas company to supply gas to GENCOs commencing from last week, and they are buying at local price not at the export price.

“So with that we hope in the very near future in a week or two we should have improved generation and supply. Distribution is going to be done by DISCOs which is why we are doing everything possible for transmission company to have all the equipment necessary for effective transmission. We hope and I assure you that power generation and distribution as well will improve despite the rains that have come in now,” he noted.

On a second memo presented before FEC, the Minister noted that an approval was given for the award of contract for the procurement of telephone numbers of 33 KV circuit breakers and 120 numbers of surge arrestors for systems use for Transmission Company of Nigeria.

He assured that government was still committed to providing an improving services on electricity to Nigerians.

He said, “TCN is the main body that has to do the transmission. You know generation and distribution are in private hands now, so government is only responsible for transmission. Most of the equipment have become obsolete over the years which is why you have breaking transmissions, low power outage, low power supplies and outages here and there.”

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