Power outage experienced by Nigerians on Tuesday night was caused by fire incident - Ministry

Power outage experienced by Nigerians on Tuesday night was caused by fire incident - Ministry

- The Ministry of Power has blamed the power outage experienced across the country on a fire incident on its Escravos Lagos Pipeline System in Edo state on Tuesday, January 2

- The ministry said the incident required a shutdown of the pipeline supplying gas to its power stations

- It said it was working to overcome the set back

Nigerians experienced power outage across the country on the night of Tuesday, January 2, Premium Times reports.

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Legit.ng gathered that the Ministry of Power said in a statement in the early hours of Wednesday, January 3, that the outage was caused by fire at a gas pipeline system which interrupted gas supply and affected the national grid.

The statement read: "Regrettably, after a sustained period of increasing production and distribution of power since September 2017 to date, the Nigerian Gas Processing and Transportation Company Ltd (NGPTC) has reported a fire incident on its Escravos Lagos Pipeline System near Okada, Edo state on Tuesday, 2nd January, 2018.

The ministry said the incident required a shutdown of the pipeline supplying gas to its power stations.

"The incident requires a shutdown of the pipeline supplying gas to Egbin 1,320MW; Olorunsogo NIPP 676MW, Olorunsogo 338MW, Omotosho NIPP 450MW, Omotosho 338 MW and Paras 60MW power stations.

"The sudden loss of generation due to interruption in gas supply from these stations caused the national transmission grid to trip off around 20:20 on 2nd January 2018. The national transmission grid is owned and operated by the Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN).

"Most of Nigeria’s power generation is from thermal power stations that require gas for fuel. The gas is produced by oil and gas companies overseen by the Ministry of Petroleum Resources.

"The gas is delivered to the power stations through pipelines owned and operated by Nigerian Gas Processing and Transportation Company Ltd (NGPTC), a subsidiary of Nigerian National Petroleum Company (NNPC).

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"TCN and the generation companies are working to restore operation of the national grid. Once the national grid is restored output from the hydroelectric power stations and all other unaffected gas fired thermal power stations will be increased to the extent possible to minimize the impact of loss of generation from the affected power stations while NNPC takes necessary steps to restore gas supply.

"We urge members of the public to bear with us as we work to overcome this set back which should be temporary," the statement read.

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Meanwhile, Legit.ng previously reported that the Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN) on Sunday, December 24, disclosed that it recorded new national peak with the transmission of 5,222.3 Mega Watts (MW) of electricity into the national grid on Dec. 18.

TCN general manager, public affairs, Ndidi Mbah, said in a statement in Abuja that the achievement was the highest ever recorded in the nation’s power sector to-date.

Mbah said the current peak transmission surpassed the 5,155.9 MW attained on Dec 8, and the 5,074.7 MW earlier recorded on Feb 2, 2016.

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Source: Legit.ng

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