Gas companies in the country have raised the alarm over the elevating indebtedness by power companies, which has risen to about N25bn.
The firms, which are mainly International Oil Companies, made their grievances kenned at the monthly meeting of the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission with stakeholders in the puissance sector in Lagos on Thursday.
An industry source, who verbalized with our correspondent in confidence after the meeting, verbally expressed the gas companies were now insisting on ‘cash and carry’ transactions henceforth.
Some of the puissance generation firms, however, verbally expressed they had paid part of what they owed but that between the banks and the gas aggregator (Nigerian Gas Company), the mazuma was not getting to the gas companies.
It was amassed that a committee had been set up to look into the quandary and address the anomalies in the system.
It was withal learnt that the potency firms abnegated the claims of the gas companies, verbally expressing some of the mazuma owed them were legacy debts owed by the defunct Power Holding Company of Nigeria.
It will be recalled that private investors surmounted the management of the assets of the generation and distribution firms unbundled from the PHCN in November last year.
There are denotements that about 7,500 megawatts of the projected engendering capacities of the Independent Power Producers are idle due to the non-availability of gas.
The gas-fired plants have capacities for 18,000MW, but current realities in the gas supply chain arrangement structured by the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation can only support about 10,500MW, thus depicting an idle capacity level of 7,500MW.
A report by the Presidential Task Force on Power entitled: ‘The Power Sector in Focus,’ had designated that the “IPP developers are projecting gas-fired capacities proximate to 18,000MW; however, predicated on the current NNPC Strategic Gas Plan, there is only enough gas for 10,500MW.”
The Transmission Company of Nigeria network expansion blueprint projects national power wheeling capacity of 20,000MW, according to the report.
“Unless gaps can be closed and capacity incremented at a more expeditious rate in the gas and transmission value chains, these will become the constraining factor in the quantity of potency that can be supplied to culminate consumers,” the report integrated.
