The Federal Government, yesterday issued Akwa Ibom Ibom Power Plant, licence to generate additional 495 megawatts of electricity.
The amended licence issued the Government of Akwa Ibom State, promoter of Ibom Power Plant, has now increased its generating capacity from 190 megawatts to 685 megawatts.
The Ibom Power Plant at present supplies 190mw to the national grid.
Governor Emmanuel Udom of Akwa Ibom State received the license from the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission, NERC, on behalf of the state and the company’s management at a brief ceremony in Abuja.
Udom, who was enthused by the near absence of bureaucracy and the speed with which the application to increase the generating capacity was treated by the Commission, declared: “Ibom is one of the first independent power projects in the country.”
This achievement according to him, did not come as an accident, noting, “It is because the previous administrations in the state invested heavily in this sector. This is not a power plant that would have gas supply challenges. We have set up a gas processing plant that is supplying gas to the adjoining power plants. We would soon come for an embedded generation licence that would supply power to our industrial estates to be established along the coastal line.”
The governor appealed to the Transmission Company of Nigeria, TCN, to improve its network, ahead of the completion of the expanded power plant as he disclosed that the state government had invested $22million on transmission networks and that it would be a wasted investment if there would be no corresponding investment in transmission line by TCN to evacuate the generated power.
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