Shell Petroleum Development Company (SPDC), has said that six power plants in the country remain idle because of lack of gas to fuel their operations.
Its Senior Commercial Adviser, Upstream Gas, Emmanuel Anyaeto, said the plants could not operate as there was no infrastructure to convey gas to their locations. He spoke on the sidelines of the ‘Gas Aggregation Buyers’ Forum’ organized by the Gas Aggregation Company of Nigeria (GACN), in Abuja.
He said gas producers were also reluctant to supply the power plants with gas owing to their rising debt profile which was almost hitting $500million. He said Nigeria needed about two billion standard cubic feet of gas to meet its requirement for both domestic use and power plants.
He said the power plants, are government owned, but since the government is not paying, the producers now require a guarantee that they would be paid upon supply of gas. This condition, Anyaeto said, is what the government is yet to fulfill and has culminated in the shortage of gas for the power plants.
