Yemisi Izuora
Chairman of Cummins Cogeneration and CEO of Powergas Africa, Mr Deepak Khilnani, has said the company would add 450 MW of electricity to the National Grid in Nigeria, over 10 percent of the nation’s current electricity production.
The additional power coming in the next three years is to support governments efforts in dealing with epileptic power supply.
Khilnani said the company understands that cost effective and reliable power is the backbone of a robust industrialised economy.
He said, “With one of the lowest per capita electrification rates in the world and high-energy costs, Cummins Power Generation Nigeria is committed to driving cost effective energy solutions across Nigeria”.
He reiterated the group’s confidence in the Nigerian energy sector and laid out some of their key investment plans for the next three years.
Speaking at a Cummins event co-hosted with the UK Department for International Trade, the Chairman stated, “I am very proud of the end to end service capability we have built in Nigeria having engineering and design capabilities, power generation and virtual gas supply in house.
We are truly able to deliver projects on time and guarantee reliable power. Most importantly we are paid for performance – delivery of kilo watts.”
Khilnani also stressed the importance of energy development, not only from a company perspective, but also from a development outlook.
The World Bank draws a strong positive correlation between economic growth and power availability.
The high performance lean burn Cummins industrial gas generators are manufactured in the UK and are now the industry leading standard, delivering very effective savings in fuel consumption to end users.
Khilnani, who is also a member of the Oil and Gas Advisory Board of UKTI (UK Government-Industry Consultancy Body), added that closer workings with The Department for International Trade is helping drive our mission to improve power availability in Nigeria.
John Woodruffe, the Deputy Director of The Department For International Trade, Nigeria, added: “it is always good to see such great companies such as Cummins bringing their innovations and skills to Nigeria.
The Department for International Trade is proud of its close working relationship with companies such as Cummins in their bid to contribute to the improvement of electricity generation within Nigeria.”
Cummins Power Generation Nigeria’s energy solution is also extremely environmentally friendly as the primary fuel source is natural gas, which emits approximately one-tenth the emissions of diesel. Not only is gas less than half the price of diesel in Nigeria today, but it’s also much cleaner.
Moreover, gas is domestically sourced compared to imported diesel, thereby boosting the local economy and creating thousands of high skilled employment opportunities.
With more regular piped gas outages, Powergas Africa has fast-tracked the construction of some new Compressed Natural Gas (CNG) stations to meet demand in the West, East and Middle Belt of Nigeria.
“We want to take gas to the North. Moreover, Powergas is developing a portfolio approach whereby if gas outage occurs in one region, we will still be able to deliver gas to our customers by operating multiple CNG mother stations,” said Deepak Khilnani.
Confident of an economic revival in Nigeria, Powergas is building 2 new compression and liquefaction stations by 2018, with enough CNG and LNG to generate 500 MW of electricity at power plants across Nigeria where the pipeline does not reach.
“The CNG development acts as a backbone to the growth in the power generation business as we are able to guarantee fuel availability,” stated the Group Chairman.
The ‘virtual pipeline’ offering provides natural gas to clients who are not connected to the pipeline.
Powergas recently received the prestigious “Best Compressed & Liquefied Natural Gas Production Company” of the Year in 2016 from The Institute for Government Research Leadership Technology (IGRLT).
Following an intensive selection process, the award was bestowed to an internationally recognised organization that is performance driven, innovative and contributes positively to the economic growth and prosperity of Nigeria.