General Electric, a United States multinational company, plans to launch a gas turbine assembly plant in Nigeria next year as it seeks to tap growing demand for gas-fired power plants in the country.
The Chief Executive Officer, GE Nigeria, Mr. Lazarus Angbazo, said on Thursday that the company had invested over $100m in the plant.
He said the construction work on the plant, which is located in Calabar, Cross River State, would be completed in December.
According to him, GE wants to support the development of Nigeria’s gas reserve, which is largely untapped, and has invested in some local power plants.
Reuters quoted the US company as saying by email that operations would start at the plant in the first quarter of next year.
Nigeria privatised its electricity sector in 2013, aiming to end decades of blackouts, which have hampered economic growth. Most of the plants it sold were gas-fired, operating below capacity due to inadequate gas supply.
Officials said demand for gas in the country was estimated to rise to three billion standard cubic feet per day by 2017 from 1.2 billion scf per day in 2015, 10 times the 300 million scf of eight years ago.
The country has the world’s ninth largest proven gas reserves at 187 trillion scf. Last month, the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation said it wanted to more than triple gas supply for local use by 2020.
GE has made a bid for a $2bn railway project to connect Nigeria’s northern cities to the south of the country and could expand its plant to include locomotive assembly.
“We are already in talks with major haulage companies in the country to secure their buy-in on the project,” Angbazo was quoted as saying.
In January, the NNPC disclosed that GE proposed to invest in the nation’s three refineries located in Port Harcourt, Warri and Kaduna, as well as in selected power projects across the country.
The Group Managing Director, NNPC, Dr. Maikanti Baru, announced that GE stated that it and its teams of partners, including a consortium of engineering, procurement and construction partners, off-takers, traders and some financiers would be involved in the initiative.
