Vice President, Yemi Osibanjo, yesterday revealed that the country didn’t have sufficient gas to fire the country’s power plants to generate up to 7,000 megawatts of electricity.
Osinbajo, who spoke at the NAEE/International Association for Energy Economics Annual International Conference in Abuja, expressed disappointment in the fact that despite Nigeria’s enormous natural gas reserves of over 185 trillion cubic feet, the country was still faced with huge energy supply problems, the Vanguard reports.
“In fact, it is an irony that we do not have sufficient gas to fire our power plants up to 7,000MW, yet in energy industry circles, Nigeria is described as more of a gas territory than an oil territory,” Osinbajo, who was represented by his Senior Special Assistant (Power and Privatisation), Chiedu Ugbo, said.
He said currently, the country had over 12,500MW of installed electricity generating capacity, consisting of gas thermal, and hydropower plants, stating that capacity of about 7,000MW was available to be generated, if the required fuel was available.
He, however, disclosed that in spite of the available capacity, power plants in the country, over the last couple of weeks, distributed less than 4,000MW of electricity to consumers across the country.