A destroyed refinery By Favour Ifeoluwa & Akinola Ajibade The Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited( NNPCL) says it has destroyed 134 illegal refineries in the last few weeks. Also, the company said 63 illegal pipeline connections were uncovered during the the weeks . The corporation, In a visual report, stated that at about 2 am on Sunday, a joint team of security agents discovered a large wooden boat illicitly loading stolen crude oil from Barge AGS01 within the OML 18 operating area, noted intelligence report a large wooden wooden boat was caught receiving crude oil from the barge. According to the state-owned oil firm, while the barge was towed away with a tugboat in custody, five speedboats used in towing the large wooden boat to the illegal loading site were also detained and the particulars of the tugboats and barge used for the operation were reportedly seized for further investigation. It further said that two large boats, which involve
By Favour & Akinola Ajibade
The Managing Director, Niger Delta Power Holding Company ( NDPHC) Limited, Mr Chiedu Ugbo, said the sector regulator is working to resolve payment of remaining N180 billion debts owed the company.
He said this yesterday (Thursday) in Abuja, while outligining measures, which are being undertaken by the company to remove problems plaguing the distribution of electricity to consumers in the country.
Recall that power distribution companies (DisCos) have defaulted on the payment to Nigerian Bulk Electricity Trading (NBET) which guaranteed the power sold to them for onward distribution to customers.
Ugbo however explained that, “It is a systemic issue in terms of collections from the distribution companies to the Nigeria Bulk Electricity Trading NBET (N-BET) and N-BET pays us. It is a systemic issue and because of that, we owe some gas companies as well.
" NPPHC Ugbo is working to resolve the payment of outstandings owed NDPHC within the shortest possible time. Yes, we’re being owed no doubt,” Ugbo explained.
Highlighting the sector's problems, Ugbo said the whole power grid is challenged by offtake evacuations from transmission and offtake by distribution and that if the distribution is not able to take what the distribution can carry, the transmission will not be able to take what is generated.
To solve the problem, he said that NDPHC is “working assiduously to ensure end-to-end, from generation to end users. We are working with distribution companies ditto transmission companies on how clear the bottlenecks. We also work with distribution companies to clear the bottlenecks to ensure that we reach the end users.
“We equally have distribution interventions all over the country, in all the states, to ensure that we improve the capacity of the distribution companies. Right now, we are working with Eko and Ibadan distribution companies using what we call bilateral sales. So, we sell directly to them. Thankfully, the ones we are selling and some of them are paying us as due
“We are also targeting industrial and huge consumers who by the National Electricity Regulatory Commission’s regulation can take two megawatts and above, We are supplying them and we are working on supplying more.”
On the peculiar challenges the NDPHC is facing and efforts to resolve them, Ugbo said “We have a mandate as Niger Delta Power Holding Company Limited. The governments of the Federation, federal, state, and local governments have spent a lot of money in terms of the assets that have developed on behalf of Nigerian.
“The assets are there so we have been charged to make sure that the assets are optimized, for the benefit of Nigerians. We need maximum performance of the assets, particularly the power generation assets, where we have gas limitations.
“We also have transmission and distribution limitations, but we are a government investment and we will work with the relevant stakeholders to make sure we resolve these challenges and to ensure that the load from these power plants is offtaken for the benefit of Nigerians.”
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