Nigeria Power Plans Must Overcome Gas-Pipeline Sabotage

For Nigeria’s state-owned energy company, supplying gas to power plants around the country depends on fixing pipelines quicker than they get ruptured.

In April, the Nigerian National Petroleum Corp. took 10 days to repair leaks on its Trans-Forcados Gas Pipeline, which transports more than half of all gas going to the country’s power plants. It was the fifth repair since the start of the year. Days later, seven more leaks were found less than a mile away and gas couldn’t be delivered.

“The last three to four months have been the most frustrating for us,” David Ige, group executive director for gas and power at the state-owned company known as NNPC said in an interview. “We’re now in a situation where we’re not only managing future attacks, but we’re also trying to manage the structural integrity of the pipeline which has been severely compromised.”

With Africa’s biggest gas reserves of 184 trillion cubic feet and demand for electricity more than triple the current capacity, gas-generated power was touted as the obvious solution by a succession of governments.

Nigeria currently produces about 9 billion cubic feet of gas per day, half of which is exported as liquefied natural gas. Another 1 billion cubic feet a day is flared in the course of oil production, 1 billion cubic feet is re-injected into oil wells daily for pressure stability and about 2 billion cubic feet per day is set aside for power stations.