General Electric breaks a record with the repair of Dangote gas turbine in Nigeria
In a first for Nigeria, US power company, General Electric will be repairing a gas-powered turbine in the country.
According to the President and CEO, GE Nigeria, Dr Lazarus Angbazo, GE will be repairing one of Dangote Cement Plc’s gas turbines, which developed a fault after two years of operation.
It is the first time such a delicate repair project would take place in Nigeria.
The turbine contributed about 47 MW to 180MW combined capacity to the facility before it developed a fault.
According to the Angbazo, “GE decided to repair the LM6000 engine in Nigeria, leveraging its worldwide network in order to assemble the people, parts and tools needed to undertake this skilled and delicate work.”
The statement further explained that the company then assembled a crack team of engineers made up of Wiebe Van der Werff, a Dutch expert who was flown into the country to work with a Nigerian team led by Nwabueze Adiuku of the GE service shop in Port Harcourt alongside Granite Field Engineers led by Sadiq Ayomide.
Repairing the turbines in the country, according to the statement, brought Dangote Plc savings in time and cash worth $2.5million.
Commenting on what the project means for his Nigerian team, Adiuku noted that “it gives us an idea of what we can achieve with Emerald, Calabar when the facility gets commissioned in 2017” while for Ayomide the feat “is a major breakthrough for me as a FS Engineer and it shows that GE Power Solutions can be localised and for the customer (Dangote) it shows that we are always with them and are ready to provide cost effective solutions whenever the need arises.”
Angbazo described the project as a very important one for the organisation. “By undertaking a service project of this scale and complexity in Nigeria, we help to expand our skills and capacity in this region…Not only has the decision to do the work locally significantly reduced costs for our client, it has enabled us to undertake the project with minimal disruption to production at the Dangote plant.”
He further noted that the successful completion of the project will further give confidence to the Dangote Group and propel more advanced maintenance works to be completed for SSA customers in a cost-effective and timely manner.
The turbine was transported by road from Obajana to Port Harcourt a distance of 440 km over a one-week period because the GE workshop has all the tools and standard facilities to carry out the scope of work.
