According to a former Chief Executive Officer of the Volta River Authority Dr. Charles Wireku Brobbey, Nigeria’s decision to cut gas supply to Ghana’s Aboadze thermal plant was occasioned
by the failure of the government to settle its indebtedness to the Nigerian gas authorities and
this might worsen power supply in Ghana.
Wireku-Brobbey told a Ghanaian news medium that contrary to expectation, the constant power supply in the country is not dependent on the incoming power barges from Turkey.
He said, “The problem for us not the arrival or non-arrival of the power barges. As we speak
the government owes Nigeria over GHC100 million, which we are yet to settle, and that is
the problem that should concern us.”
Currently, Ghana receives in excess of 140 million standard cubic feet per day of gas from
Nigeria. The supply, although not enough, has greatly enhanced power supply in the country
over the last few weeks.
Ghana had in November 2014, accused Nigeria of breaching the agreement to supply gas to it,
a situation that has worsened the country’s power supply.
Mr. Edward Bawa, Communications Consultant at Ghana’s Energy Ministry had told a Ghanaian
news medium that since the inception of the West African Gas Pipeline Project, Nigeria,
which is responsible for supplying Ghana, Togo and Benin with natural gas, has proven to be
unreliable.
“Since gas started flowing through the West African Gas Pipeline, Nigeria has demonstrated
that they cannot be relied upon to give us gas,” he maintained.
According to him, Nigeria was supposed to send 123 million cubic feet of gas to Ghana but was
only able to supply around 49 cubic feet, saying the quantity is “woefully inadequate to enable
us to power our generating plants.”
Bawa called for an increase in the sanctions to be meted out to Nigeria for breaching the contractual agreement, noting that only this will serve to deter Nigeria from continually breaching the terms of the contract.
He said, “The penalty, for the entire contractual period, if Nigeria fails to meet the supply requirement is $20 million dollars. That is peanut to them so they do not have incentive to supply Ghana the required quantities of gas, especially when they have other thermal plants that are asking for gas. Simply they are just not respecting the contract.”
To this end, Ghana’s load shedding exercise took a worsening turn as the Ghana Grid
Company, (GRIDCO) says it will have to reduce power supply to consumers further if Nigeria’s
gas supply to the country continues to dwindle.
The country had in the first few months of 2014 received a compensation of $10 million, about
N1.6 billion, from Nigeria over the failure of the latter to meet supply of gas agreement between
the two countries.
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