The 400MW Gasfired Plant in Obite in TOTAL operated Oil Mining Lease (OML) 58 is not likely to be built. It is official. “What the government is asking us to do is not necessarily to build a Power Plant but to supply the gas”, Nicolas Terraz, Managing Director TOTAL E&P Nigeria Limited, told the Africa Oil+Gas Report.
The Obite Gasfired power plant project has been on the drawing board for about a decade and was part of a queue of Power Plants that were meant to be constructed by Oil Majors in Nigeria between 2003 and 2007 to (1) Put out the Flare and (2) help boost electricity supply in the country.
Out of the five such plants, conceived around 2003 to contribute to Nigeria’s Power Reform, only two were built; Shell’s Afam VI and Agip’s Okpai Power Plant.
Still on the drawing board are ExxonMobil’s planned Qua Iboe Plant, Chevron’s Agura Power Plant and TOTAL’s Obite. TOTAL, in fact has run the OBITE gas processing plant fueled by the cluster of fields located in OML 58. “Right now we are focused on upstream projects to supply gas”, Mr. Terraz says. “We’d focus on what we know best. We are not really professionals in power generation”
This story had earlier been published in an edition of the monthly magazine: Africa Oil+Gas Report.
