In a bid to bolster the efficiency of the national grid, the House of Representatives has called on Vice President Kashim Shettima, who also serves as the Chairman of the Niger Delta Power Holding Company (NDPHC) Board, to convene an urgent meeting for the revitalization of the Gbarain Power Plant in Bayelsa State.
This resolution came following a motion put forward during Thursday’s plenary by Honorable Oboku Oforji.
Furthermore, the House has summoned Mr. Joseph Ugbo, the Managing Director of NDPHC, to appear before its Committee on Power to provide insights into the current state of the Gbarain Power Plant.
Oforji emphasized that the Gbarain Power Plant, situated in Koroama, Yenagoa, Bayelsa State, is a critical facility with a capacity of at least 252 megawatts. He highlighted its design to potentially evolve into a combined cycle gas turbine configuration in the future.
The motion also recalled a setback the NDPHC encountered when the Power Control Module of the Gbarain Power Plant was lost to a fire incident.
Notably, Oforji underscored the proactive role of the Bayelsa State Government in shouldering some responsibilities of the NDPHC, especially given the impact of the plant’s outage on vital institutions like the Niger Delta University, reliant on its power supply.
The State Government’s intervention included the rehabilitation and restoration of power supply through a 60MVA, 132/33KV power transformer, which now feeds the Gbarain Power Station auxiliaries and the host communities via a previously inactive 2×15 MVA 33/11KV injection substation.
Oforji added: “Saddened that rather than resuscitate the power plant which was built with $400m and valued as of today at over $800m, the management of the NDPHC is proposing to designate the 252MW Open Cycle Power station as a construction site, thereby abandoning its primary responsibility of running it to the benefit of the state, the Niger Delta and the nation at large.
“One is prompted to doubt the competence of NDPHC to manage this power plant which has the potential to be the largest power station in the nation because of its comparative advantage over other power plants in its proximity to gas,” Oforji said, adding that “Reaching its potentials, Gbarain Power Station can conveniently power the whole Niger Delta region and beyond.”
He further added that the Shell Petroleum Development Company has over 60MMsc of gas allocated to the plant which is not utilised due to the inability of the company to operate.
