Lafarge Africa, Finland’s Wartsila and the World Bank’s IFC have agreed to build a 220-MW gas-fired power plant in Nigeria to boost electricity supplies, they said on Wednesday.
The trio stated that their plan was to help fast-track increased power supplies to the national grid and to provide more electricity to about 1.4 million households. They did not disclose the cost of the project.
Nigeria is reforming its power sector to end chronic outages seen as the biggest constraint on business growth and one of the main gripes of its 17 million people, who only get power a few hours, or less, a day.
At 4 000 MW, Nigeria’s electricity output is a tenth of South Africa’s for a population three times the size. Power supplies last some 4 hours a day in urban centres while many rural areas often get nothing.
The plan is to add a 220-MW power plant to Lafarge Africa’s existing 90-MW plant, which is used mainly for its cement operations in Nigeria.
The plant supplies about 40 MW of excess power already, so once the new plant is built about 260 MW will go to the national grid under a power purchase agreement.
Local conglomerate Transcorp, with interests in power, oil and gas, has said it will invest $90-million to upgrade the generation capacity of its power plant to 715 MW from 463 MW.
Energy firm Forte Oil, which paid $132 million to buy a 414-MW power plant under the government’s privatisation scheme, is also expanding.
By: Reuters
