The Ministry of Power, Works and Housing has apologized for the power outage which affected the whole country on Tuesday night.
The national blackout resulted from a fire outbreak along Escravos-Lagos Pipeline System near Okada, Edo State on Tuesday, January 2, 2018. The fire reportedly destroyed a powerline tower, which collapsed and triggered a system failure with rippling consequences.
Specifically, the fault instigated automatic shutdown of six power plants on the national grid.
“Regrettably, after a sustained period of increasing production and distribution of power since September 2017 to date, the Nigerian Gas Processing and Transportation Company Ltd (NGPTC) has reported a fire incident on its Escravos Lagos Pipeline System near Okada, Edo State on Tuesday, January 2, 2018,” the ministry explained in a statement.
The ministry continued that it led to the shutdown of the pipeline supplying gas to Egbin 1,320mw; Olorunsogo NIPP 676mw, Olorunsogo 338MW, Omotosho NIPP 450mw, Omotosho 338 mw and Paras 60mw power stations.
The ministry said the sudden loss of generation due to the interruption in gas supply from these stations caused the national transmission grid to “trip off around 20:20 on January 2, 2018.”
The ministry apologised to the citizens for any difficulty they might have been through, assuring that TCN and the generation companies are working to restore operation of the national grid.
“We urge members of the public to bear with us as we work to overcome this set back which should be temporary,” it said.