In a bid to ensure uninterrupted power supply, the House of Representatives have called on the authorities to resuscitate the Gbarain Power Plant situated in Koroama, Bayelsa state.
Adopting a motion sponsored by Hon Oboku Oforji at the plenary presided by Speaker Tajudeen Abass, the urged the Vice President, Sen Kashim Shettima, who chairs the Board of the Niger Delta Power Holding Company (NDPHC), to summon an emergency meeting of the board to achieve the objective.
The House thereby summoned the Managing Director of the NPHDC to shed light on the present state of the Gbarain Power Plant.
Oforji while moving the motion noted that the Niger Delta Power Holding Plants were built with resources of the three tiers of Government (Federal, State and Local Government) through the application of the excess crude funds.
The lawmaker disclosed that Gbarain is one of the twenty_three National Integrated power projects which has been deemed .” Critical infrastructure in the generation, transmission , distribution and natural gas.supply sub_sectors of the electric power value chain” by the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission.
He further stated that on the 30th of November 2020 the Niger Delta Power Holding company (NDPHC) lost the Power Control Module (PCM) of the Gbarain power plant to an inferno adding that the Bayelsa State Government offered to take some responsibilities of the NDPHC since the state happened to be the most affected, particularly as the state owned Niger Delta University derives it’s electricity supply from the station.
Accordingly, he said the state Government undertook the rehabilitation and restoration of power supply through the 60MVA,132/33KV power transformer which is currently supplying the Gbarain power station auxiliaries and the host communities through the 2×15 MVA33/11KV injection substation which was not functioning before the intervention and also a NDPHC project.
He expressed concern that three years down the line the NDPHC have not been able to live up to their responsibility by replacing the Power Control Module, which allegedly have been lying redundant in one of it’s uncompleted station.
He noted: “Cognizant that the Gbarain Power Station has close Proximity of only 700m to the Gbarain_Ubie multi_million dollars Central Gas processing facility that transports over one billion, Standard cubic feet of gas to the NLNG in Bonny, therefore gas is not a constraint.
“One is prompted to doubt the competence of Niger Delta Holding Company to manage this power plant which has the potentials to be the largest power station in the nation because of its comparative advantage over other Power Plants in it’s proximity to gas. Reaching its potentials, Gbarain Power Station can conveniently Power the whole Niger Delta Region and beyond.
“Saddened that rather than resuscitate the power plant which is built with four hundred million US Dollars, and valued at of today with over Eight hundred million US Dollars, the management of the NDPHC is proposing to designate the 252MW Open Cycle Power station as a construction site, thereby abandoning it’s primary responsibility of running it to the benefit of the state, the Niger Delta and the nation at large.
” In fact, the Shell Petroleum Development Company has over 60MMsc (sixty million Standard Cubic Feet ) of gas allocated to the plant which is unutilised due to the inability of company to operate. This in itself is a risk to the community In case of a leakage of the gas pipeline. it is the intervention of the Bayelsa State Government that has kept the equipment intact, because they are supposed to be under controlled temperature if not, they would have exploded.”
