NIGERIA – Nigeria’s power sector has lost revenues of at least US$1.21 billion in the first eight months of the year due to inefficiencies in gas transmission and distribution, a recent report on the industry’s performance has shown.
Apart from costing the power sector billions of Naira in lost revenues, constrains in gas transmission and distributions were also reported to lead to a stall in the production of about 33,122MW of power during the period under review.
Documents on the monthly performance of the sector since the beginning of this year obtained by Punch Nigeria from the Federal Ministry of Power revealed how Nigeria’s power sector has been losing billions of Naira on a monthly basis.
In the first three months of the year, the sector lost an average monthly revenue of US$143 million while in the months of April, May, June, and July the average monthly losses rose to US$160 million.
The report from Nigeria’s Ministry of Power showed that between August 1 and August 21, 2020, the sector lost US$104.21 million due to constrains in gas transmission and distribution.
Further analysis of the documents showed that the constraints limited the generation of huge quantum of power on a monthly basis.
In January, February and March this year, the constraints halted the generation of 3,791 megawatts-hour/hour, 3,949MWh/h and 4,406MWh/h of energy respectively.
During the months of April, May, June and July, the sector posted a combined loss of over 16,000MWh of energy.
In the month of August, a total of 3,809MWh/h of energy was stalled as a result of gas, transmission and distribution constraints in the sector.
The cumulative quantum of energy that could not be produced in the eight months due to constrains in gas transmission and distributed amounted 33,122MW
Earlier this month, the Transmission Company of Nigeria announced that the country’s power sector achieved a new all-time national peak of 5,420MW.
“This is the highest ever recorded in the nation’s power sector to-date, surpassing the previous peak of 5,377.80MW recorded on the 1st of August, 2020, by 42.50MW,” the General Manager, Public Affairs, TCN, Ndidi Mbah, had said.
Mbah explained that the gradual but steady improvement in electricity delivery in the nation’s power sector was attributable to the keen interest of government.
She said this was as a result of the government’s ability to pilot the programmes and projects geared towards growing the power sector as well as the collective effort of all power sector players in the value chain.
Case in point is the US$2 billion Siemens AG contract which is expected to transform Nigeria’s power sector, improve efficiencies, and raise national grid capacity to 25,000MW.
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