President Bola Tinubu on Friday flagged off the Gwagwalada Independent Power Plant Project of the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPCL).

It was learnt that the Power Project is a 1.350MW combined cycle power plant with auxiliaries and a balance of plant to be situated on 547 hectares of land already acquired at Gwagwalada, in the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Abuja.

The project is expected to generate between $ 700 and $ 800 million annually within the first ten years of operations.

It was necessitated by the need to deliver gas towards additional power generation capacity in Nigeria. Gas supply to the plant shall be through the Ajaokuta- Kaduna-Kano (AKK) Gas Pipeline Project which is currently in the advanced stages of construction.

Accordingly, the fuel requirements will be satisfied under a long-term Gas Sales, Purchase and Aggregation Agreement with Shell Petroleum Development Company Joint Venture (SPDC JV).

The project consists of three power train blocks of 450MW each. 

Each block will include two General Electric GT13E2 gas turbine generators, two heat recovery steam generators, one steam turbine electric generator, one direct air-cooling condenser, a balance of plant equipment and a black start diesel generator.

On completion, the project will generate an average of 10.3 million Megawatt hours of electricity per year for sale to the Nigerian Bulk Electricity Trading Plc (NBET).

The sales of the generated power will be through Power Purchase Agreement with the NBET to distribution companies under long-term agreements and direct sales to major off-takers.

China Machinery Engineering Corporation will construct the project under a turnkey Engineering, Procurement and Construction contract.

The ground-breaking event was attended by the Group Chief Executive Officer of the NNPC Limited, Mele Kyari; the Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Petroleum Resources, Gabriel Aduda and his counterpart in the FCT Olusade Adesola, among other top dignitaries in the private and public sectors.