Mohammed S. Shehu
4 April 2009
Anglo-Dutch oil giant Shell has shut down a gas plant in western Niger Delta, cutting national power supply by around 25 percent, to repair an illegally breached pipeline, a spokesman told foreign news service AFP yesterday. A report on their website said the 300-million-standard cubic feet Utorogu gas plant "was shut down on April 1st following a leak on the condensate line."
Shell spokesman Precious Okolobo, according to the report, said: "A joint investigation team discovered that unknown persons had illegally installed a valve on the line. The valve apparently failed," he said. He said gas supplies to the Nigerian Gas Company had been disrupted as a result of the incident, resulting in a drop in power generation in the country.
Excerpts from the report read: "We are doing all we can to repair the line and resume gas supplies as soon as possible," he said. "The loss in gas supply has resulted in a cut back in generation by over 700 megawatts and will entail load-shedding in many parts of the country," the state-run Power Holding Company of Nigeria said in a statement. Nigeria currently produces around 3,000 megawatts of electricity for a population of 140 million people, while South Africa produces more than 43,000 megawatts of electricity for a population a third the size.
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This is what happens when a supposedly sovereign nation like Nigeria relies too much on a sabotaging foreign firm to control its only source of revenue for infrastructural development. Until Nigeria weans itself from this particular MNE called Shell, it will never be independent to achieve a single goal of providing adequate power supply by December 2009 as the Minister of Power promised last week. Emperor Yar, your time is running out. Shell should be made to quit Nigeria, altogether, for its attempt to hold the nation ransomed, and be replaced by a more local-friendly enterprise – a role that could be fulfilled by China.