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Local Development Community Projects

Access to Energy

We are an integrated energy company, made up of people who fully support a socially just energy transition.

One of the most critical challenges we face is the lack of access to reliable and affordable energy for billions of people. Improving this access is consistent with UN Sustainable Development Goal 7 (Affordable and Clean Energy), and is absolutely central to broader efforts to reduce poverty, improve education, health, gender equality and environmental sustainability.

Eni in Nigeria fully supports this agenda, as encapsulated in the United Nation’s ‘Sustainable Energy for All’ initiative, which espouses the objective of achieving universal access to energy.

In this context, we execute and manage several access to energy projects in Nigeria, which deliver power to millions of Nigerians through several mechanisms including:

Independent Power Projects (IPPs),
The direct connection of communities to NAOC facilities,
The establishment of off-grid systems, and
Assisted connections to the national grid.

These projects are largely executed through the Nigerian Agip Oil Company (NAOC), which operates in the onshore areas of the Niger Delta, where our host and transit communities are to be found.

In 2005, NAOC and its partners inaugurated a combined cycle power plant in Delta State. Through the Okpai independent power plant NAOC and its Joint Venture partners have the capacity to supply up to 480MW of electricity to the national grid. Plans are currently underway to double the capacity of this Power Plant, bringing its total capacity to around 1GW. The Okpai power station in 2019 generated approximately 1,400 GWh contributing to about 10% to the total energy fed into the national transmission grid of the available capacity in the Country. Two additional generation trains with gas turbine, one of which is available for operation and the other in an advanced stage of completion, will further increase the available capacity of over 300 MW, thus placing Okpai in first place for capacity among power generation plants built by private operators in Nigeria. Also, in Nigeria, since 2012, Eni through the Ob-Ob plant has supplied gas to third parties who, with a plant having an installed capacity of 150 MW, generate electricity for approximately 1 million beneficiaries.

NAOC supplies energy to communities within its operational areas by connecting them directly to its facilities. This involves the construction of energy infrastructure to supply power directly to these communities, thereby maximizing the benefits accruing to them from the presence of the company’s facilities and activities.
Some of the NAOC facilities that directly provide power to communities in this way include the Ogboinbiri Flow State, the Obama Flow Station, the Brass Oil Terminal, the Obiafu-Obrikom (Ob-Ob) Gas Plant, the Ebocha Oil Plant, and the Kwale Gas Plant. A similar project is currently underway at company’s Tebidaba Flow Station. As a result of these investments, over 37 communities are directly connected to NAOC facilities today, and are supplied with up to 39 MW, for an estimated population of 300,000 people.

NAOC provides energy to its communities also by connecting them to the National Grid.This objective is achieved by supporting local institutions with the necessary infrastructure. In 2020, sixteen communities have been connected to the National Grid, and around 100,000 people enjoy access to energy. A notable example of this approach to ‘access to energy’ is the Ahoada-West electrification project which serves as a pilot to connect several communities in the Local Government Area to the PHCN grid.

NAOC also supplies energy to the local communities by constructing special off-grid systems. In this context, NAOC supplies generators to 48 communities in its operational area, with the capacity to supply up to 12.5 MW to an estimated population of 165,000 people. NAOC also provides generator maintenance, and regular diesel supply services for free to these communities to ensure energy stability.
For the future, the company plans to gradually reduce community dependency on generators, and focus on assisting as many communities as is feasible to connect to the National Grid.