The concurrent attacks launched last week, on Chevron’s oil and gas facilities in the Escravos area of Delta State has led to a drop in power generation from about 3,600 megawatts (MW) to 2,500MW, translating to a loss of 900MW,
Chevron’s Escravos Gas Plant provides gas feedstock to power plants across the country through the Escravos-Lagos pipeline.
The Minister of Power, Works and Housing, Mr. Babatunde Fashola, on Sunday, May 8, also said that power generation had dropped to 2,500MW due to the attacks on the Chevron facilities.
According to him, power generation had averaged 3,600MW before the Wednesdayand Thursday attacks.
The drop to 3,600MW from about 5,000MW was blamed on the attack on the Forcados terminal pipeline last February. Repairs to that pipeline will be concluded next month, Fashola said.
He bemoaned the spate of attacks on oil installations and their impact on the domestic economy.
“Which country has instances of vandalism on its oil installations like Nigeria? This is economic sabotage, but we will have to evolve a new strategy to deal with this problem. We shall attack it head on,” he said.
However, daily operational reports obtained from the Nigerian electricity system operator showed that generation as at 6 am yesterday was 2,474.10MW, down from the peak generation of 2,968.9MW recorded on Saturday.
The lowest generation on Saturday, according to the operational report, was 2,160.3MW.
