Twenty international banks and equity funders have committed $900m to the Azura-Edo Independent Power Project, a 450MW gas-fired open-cycle power plant to be built in the country’s Edo State.
A JV of Siemens and Julius Berger Nigeria will start building the plant, which is expected to start generating in 2018.
Considered a model for future plants in terms of its private financing, the plant will also burn Nigeria’s natural gas, of which many billions of cubic feet are now routinely flared off as waste.
“Despite the country being a major oil and gas exporter, as many as 93 million Nigerians, just over half its population, lack electricity”.
After four years in development, the scheme reached financial close on 28 December.
On 15 January, the scheme’s co-developer, London-based Aldwych International, said Azura-Edo is Nigeria’s “first true privately developed, greenfield, limited recourse project-financed independent power plant”, and claimed it would be a template for similar projects in the country.
Construction on the plant began in October 2014 but stalled when then-president Goodluck Jonathan refused lenders’ requests for the government to waive sovereign immunity concerning project risk.
That request was granted by the new president, Muhammadu Buhari, in 2015.
The plant will be built on the outskirts of Benin City, close to Nigeria’s biggest gas distribution pipeline, on a site accessible to the country’s high voltage transmission network.
It will sell its power to Nigerian Bulk Electricity Trading, and will burn gas supplied under a long term agreement by Nigerian oil company, Seplat.
Aldwych is also acting as construction manager for the project via its wholly owned subsidiary Aldwych Azura Operations Limited.
Photograph: Oil companies in Nigeria flare off billions of cubic feet of natural gas every year (Epoxyoil.com)
