Average supply of Natural Gas From WAGP Was Half Of Contractual Volume
The Ghanaian Government has a handy excuse for the rolling blackouts experienced in Accra and the country’s other major cities in recent times. President John Mahama told the Press on visiting the Aboadze Plant, under construction. ‘We know that the challenges started as a result of the breakdown of the West African Gas Pipeline, which we are working to fix’
In other words: ‘Nigeria’s gas is not reaching this place in enough quantity to fire our power plants’.
The Energy Minister, Joe Oteng-Adjei, told The Report, Ghana 2012: “The Primary causes for load shedding are a shortfall in power generation due to erratic supply of the gas supplied by Nigeria”. He had the facts. The supply in 2012 averaged around 55MMscf/d “instead of a contractual volume of 110MMscf/d, at an expected minimum of 90MMscf/d”. The minister admits that supply has stabilized, “but it has been consistently below the minimum 90MMscf/d and since the Volta River Authority(VRA) thermal facilities are now dual fired(light crude and gas), the unreliable supply of gas causes frequent switching between crude oil and gas. This has given rise to a number of problems”.
