Ministry of Power explains what led to nationwide blackout

The Ministry of Power, Works and Housing has shed more light on what caused a nationwide blackout at about 8.20pm yesterday. The incident was due to a shut down of the Escravos-Lagos gas pipeline. The pipeline was shut down due to a fire incident that occurred near Okada, Edo State. This has led to a shut down of several power stations.

The Ministry made this known in a series of tweets from its twitter handle @fmwph The event comes at a time, Nigerians across the country are dealing with fuel scarcity.

Aftermath of the Escravos pipeline shut down

The shut down of the pipeline meant that several power stations in the country had to be shut down. They include the Egbin 1,320MW; Olorunsogo NIPP 676MW, Olorunsogo 338MW, Omotosho NIPP 450MW, Omotosho 338 MW and Paras 60MW power stations.

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The sudden loss of generation due to interruption in gas supply from these stations caused the national transmission grid to trip off around 20:20 on 2nd January 2018. The national transmission grid is owned and operated by the Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN).

Most of Nigeria’s power generation is from thermal power stations that require gas for fuel. The gas is produced by oil and gas companies overseen by the Ministry of Petroleum Resources. The gas is delivered to the power stations through pipelines owned and operated by Nigerian Gas Processing and Transportation Company Ltd (NGPTC), a subsidiary of Nigerian National Petroleum Company (NNPC).

Solutions to the shut down

The Ministry also revealed, that efforts were going on to restore the operations of the national grid. Power generation from

TCN and the generation companies are working to restore operation of the national grid. Once the national grid is restored, output from the hydroelectric power stations and all other unaffected gas fired thermal power stations will be increased to the extent possible to minimize the impact of loss of generation from the affected power stations while NNPC takes necessary steps to restore gas supply.