Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo has announced a 2.5-billion-dollar Special Energy Project designed to improve the energy sector by 2007 in Africa's top oil producer.

In a letter dated September 9 and read by Senate President Ken Nnamani to Tuesday's plenary, Obasanjo said the project was " designed to address the energy problems on all sides: generation, transmission, distribution and gas supply."

A breakdown of the project cost showed that power generation would require 1.503 billion dollars, transmission 752 million dollars, gas transportation 170 million dollars, and distribution 50 million dollars.

Nigeria, also Africa's most populous country, is currently facing energy problem, where frequent power outages have been the order of the day. Obasanjo's administration has set power generation target of 10,000 mw by 2007 compared to its current level of some 3,000 mw.

Obasanjo said the first stage of the project entailed placing orders for turbines and generators.

The contract, he went on, would be awarded to US conglomerate General Electric (GE) following consideration of competing bids from two other world renowned companies, Siemens of Germany and France's Alstom.

The country needed to make the first payment of 220 million dollars by Sept. 15, 2005 to be able to start getting delivery of the turbines and generators from June 2006 and to ensure completion of the supply by November 2006, the president said. Obasanjo did not disclose the total value of the contract.

He said that a committee headed by Vice President Atiku Abubakar and with 15 governors as members, had been set up to oversee the implementation of the project.

"This investment in the energy sector will be recovered on the privatization of the sector," Obasanjo added.

Source: Xinhua