Contracting firm, Perenco, is already done with 70 per cent of civil engineering work.

Construction work on the Gas Treatment Centre of the Kribi Gas Fired Plant is progressing at Bipaga at the entrance to Kribi town. Engineers of the contracting firm, Perenco, are burning night candles to meet the deadline billed for December 2012. An access road between the Edea-Kribi highway and the Bipaga 1 site where the gas processing centre is located is already bulldozed.

During a stopover by members of the Pipeline Monitoring and Steering Committee to the site on Saturday March 17, serious work was going on and officials said all was being done to meet the deadline. According to Vincent Reaud, a representative of Perenco at the site, over 70 per cent of civil engineering work was already done. To Jean-Baptiste Abessougue, Chief of Section of Education, Information and Communication at the Permanent Secretariat of Pipeline Monitoring and Steering Committee, the Centre will comprise a mini refinery to process the gas so as to remove undesirable substances. “There are two components being handled by the National Hydrocarbons Corporation, NHC. There is the access road of about 5 to 5.5 km and the gas pipeline which is going to be laid from the treatment centre to the main road, move again to the direction of Kribi after the toll gate, cross the road and move to the power plant. The company in charge of the road is already setting up itself and the contract for the pipeline has been awarded and work will begin soon,” he said.

The 15-km long offshore gas pipeline, which government through the National Hydrocarbons Corporation, (NHC) is building to operate has as goal to supply natural gas to the Kribi Thermal Power Station. Sources say gas from this plant will be shipped by pipeline to the Mpolongwe 2 site where the thermal station is to be constructed.