The Niger Delta Power Holding Company has announced that its National Integrated Power Project (NIPP) located in Ikot Nyong, near Calabar, is expected to start generating power from the end of Q1 2013
The facility, the biggest of all the NIPP projects in the country, will provide Nigeria with an extra 563 MW of electricity. The station has five gas turbines with a rating of about 112.5 MW each.
Calabar NIPP site manager Paul Akinola said efforts were being made for the facility, on which work began in 2006, to be inaugurated before the end of March 2013.
Akinola added that the initial completion timeline of four years had been delayed by technical and financial issues and that the completion effort was now being fast-tracked. The site manager also noted that gas would have to be sourced from United Cement Company (UNICEM) in Calabar for inauguration of the facility within the first quarter of 2013.
Akinola said, “Several challenges impaired progress of work but we are working on an alternative arrangement to fast-track the project now. We need gas to do that and we will probably tap from the gas pipe that leads to UNICEM.”
If the Q1 projection fails, the plant will be unveiled early in Q2 2013, Akinola claimed.
