Aba Ring-fence Area comprising nine of the 17 local government areas in Abia State has since 6.30 pm yesterday been thrown into darkness as a result of an abrupt disruption of natural gas supply to the 188-megawatt Geometric Power Plant in the Osisioma Industrial Layout of Aba which generates electricity and supplies to the area.
Ugo Opiegbe, Managing Director of Aba Power, the distribution arm of the Geometric Power Group, confirmed the disruption of gas to the power plant in a statement this morning apologizing to customers for the blackout.
Opiegbe attributed the stoppage to technical issues being experienced by the gas supplier.
Though the Aba Power executive did not disclose the gas supplier in the statement, it is understood that Heirs Energies has been supplying gas to Geometric Power Plant in the last three years from its Associated Gas Gathering (AGG) facilities in the Eastern part of the country.
“Gas pressure has significantly dropped in the last 24 hours”, explained Opiegbe.
“The pressure, arising from our partner’s facilities, is not strong enough to power our turbines, each of which has a 47MW capacity”.
A top official of the Nigeria Gas Marketing Limited (NGML), a subsidiary of the state-owned Nigerian National Petroleum Company Ltd (NNPCL), who asked for anonymity in the media because he is not authorized to speak to the press, claimed that there is enough gas volume for the Geometric Power Plant.
However, the elephant in the room, as the NGML executive put it, “is Heirs Energies’ inability to swap its gas with that of NGML because of the constraint in their AGG facilities”.
Heirs Energies emerged the operator of Oil Mining Lease (OML) 17 in Owaza following the Nigerian government’s failure to renew The Shell Petroleum Development Company (SDPC) licence during the President Muhammadu Buhari administration.
“Though Heirs is a new and indigenous firm”, Dike Ejike, a mechanical engineer and energy consultant, told newsmen in Abuja today, “it has been developing and improving aggressively.
“It is, however, facing legacy challenges such as aging infrastructure and a lack of investments in facilities during the long years the SDPC was in court with the Federal Government over licence renewal, which began from the Federal High Court and dragged to the Court of Appeal and finally the Supreme Court”.
The SDPC did not invest in facilities because it was not sure it would win the court case.
The Aba Power Managing Director said in the statement shared to journalists today that it is unclear when the gas pressure problem is likely to be resolved by Heirs Energies, suggesting that the power blackout may not be resolved within the next 24 hours.
Uche Elugwu, an Abuja-based engineer, said that “it is regrettable that reliable power supply that the Aba people have been enjoying is now being interrupted by gas supply issues that are beyond Aba Power, Nigeria’s 12th and newest electricity distribution company in the country”.
