The Ghana National Gas Company has ruled out significant interruptions in power supply following Tullow oil’s reduction of gas supply to it.
Corporate Communications Manager of Ghana Gas Alfred Ogbamey in an interview with Citi FM said ‘the cuts will have some consequential effects on power generation as a whole but it does not necessarily mean that it would necessarily result in dumsor or anything of the sort’. He said.
A statement released from Ghana Gas on Tuesday said Tullow, lead manager for the Jubilee field, had reduced gas supply to the company by 40 million standard cubic feet a day.
“Tullow has consequently revised downward available natural gas supply from the present 90 million standard cubic feet of gas a day (mmscfd) to 50 mmscfd.”
The reduction in gas supply is to enable Tullow embark on ‘critical turret remediation works required upstream.”
Gas from Ghana Gas is used to power a number of power plants in the country including the Ameri power plant.
There are fears the cuts will lead to power interruptions in the coming days.
But Corporate Communications Manager of Ghana Gas Alfred Ogbamey downplays the fears.
‘Tullow will be giving us about half of what they projected to give us between now and 31st of November, so that instead of them giving us ninety million standard cubic feet of gas a day they have projected that they will give us fifty.
It means that we will be giving the VRA anything around forty five to forty eight depending on whether Tullow is able to meet what they said they will give us or not.
That would lead to a significant reduction in term of the availability of gas on the generation of power at the Aboadze enclave especially for the generators of the facilities using gas specifically, Ameri and I think one or two of the TICO plants. So they would have some sort of challenge there’.
He however adds that the cuts will rather lead to an increase in the price of the commodity but says the increment will not be slapped on the consumer.
‘Certainly, it would lead to an increase in the price mix in terms of what is used to determine price, of course within the period it cannot be passed on to the consumer but it means that it will be at the discomfort of the VRA because it means that it would have to use more crude oil to generate power from the plants that can run on crude but as you and I know not all the plants run on crude’.
Fears of the power cuts due to Tullow’s reduction in gas supply, only comes a few days after the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) clarified that there is no return of dumsor despite the current power outages being experienced in some parts of the country.
Consumers have had to bear the brunt of cuts in power supply within the last few weeks.
The development also comes at a time that some concerns are being raised over imminent challenges to the generation component of the power supply chain.
“Admittedly, we have taken note of series of outages in some areas within our distribution system, but we wish to state as a matter of fact that it is not load shedding,” the Director of Operations at the ECG, Engineer Tetteh Okyne stressed.
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