Nigeria’s Egbin Power has resolved to raise $1.8 billion for investment to more than double generation capacity to meet national and West African market.
It is seeking to raise the money through debt and equity to meet the funding ahead of the start of construction work in the second quarter of next year.
“The plan is to raise the fund to be available to kick off,” it said in an email, without giving more details as the funding arrangements are being firmed up, a Bloomberg report noted.
Egbin Power, owned by Sahara Group, plans to build the second phase of its 1,320-megawatt power plant by installing “high efficiency gas combined cycle power plants,” that will produce an additional 1,754 megawatts electricity.
The first phase of the expansion project will begin with the construction of open-cycle turbines next year and will be completed with a closed cycle by 2025, it said.
The company acquired the power plant in 2013 when the government disposed of state-owned electricity generation and distribution assets to the private sector to make them efficient and help curb blackouts.
It hit the generation peak of 970 megawatts on the asset this year helped by an increase in gas supply.
Nigeria has 13,000 megawatts of installed electricity-production capacity, with only about 4,500 megawatts dispatched to the grid daily, in part because of dilapidated transmission infrastructure.
The government’s privatisation agency is now proposing to sell the transmission network in a bid to attract the investment needed to improve its capacity.
