In order to improve the effectiveness of the country’s grid, the House of Representatives has called on Vice President Kashim Shettima to call an emergency meeting of the Niger Delta Power Holding Company’s board and discuss the imminent resuscitation of the Gbarain Power Plant.

The vice president is the NDPHC board chairman.

Additionally, the house called Joseph Ugbo, the Managing Director of NDPHC, to testify before its power committee regarding the status of the power plant.

Built to support a future conversion to a combined cycle gas turbine configuration, the Gbarain Power Plant is an open cycle gas turbine power plant. Situated in the capital of Bayelsa State, Koroama, Yenagoa, is an operational power plant with a minimum capacity of 252 megawatts.

The house adopted a resolution on Thursday in response to a motion made by Mr. Oboku Oforji, the member representing the Yenagoa/Opokuma Federal Constituency in Bayelsa State, on a subject of urgent public interest.

The member from the Peoples Democratic Party introduced the resolution and stated that on November 30, 2020, a fire event caused the NDPHC to lose the power plant’s Power Control Module.

Oforji said, “The Bayelsa State Government offered to take some responsibilities of the NDPHC, since it was the most affected, particularly as the state-owned Niger Delta University derives its electricity supply from the station.”

He continued, “The State Government undertook the rehabilitation and restoration of power supply through the 60MVA,132/33KV power transformer which is currently supplying the Gbarain power station auxiliaries and the host communities through the 2×15 MVA33/11KV injection substation which was not functioning before the intervention.”

The congressman went on to say that the gas supply is not a limitation because the Gbarain Power Station is only 700 meters away from the multi-million dollar Gbarain Ubie central gas processing facility, which transfers over one billion standard cubic feet of gas to the NLNG in Bonny.

“One is prompted to doubt the competence of NDPHC to manage this power plant which has the potential to be the largest power station in the nation because of its comparative advantage over other power plants in its proximity to gas,” Oforji stated.