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Ghana has expressed doubt over the ability of Nigeria to supply gas needed for power generation in three countries under the West African Gas Pipeline Project (WAGPP).
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Chief Executive of Volta River Authority (VRA), the country’s electric power utility company, Kwetu Awotwi, said the gas infrastructure currently in place for power generation in Ghana comes from Nigeria under the WAGPP. He said his country expects gas from Nigeria this year before gas production from the country’s Jubilee oil field starts next year. The VRA boss also said that his country would need additional 180 – 200 million standard cubic feet per day of gas to generate additional 800MW of electricity in the next three years.
He said gas regulating and metering stations for the WAGPP in Cotonou, Lome and Tema had nearly been completed in readiness for gas supplies from Nigeria. Awotwi disclosed that as part of the efforts to ensure that every Ghanaian has access to electricity by 2020, the government was planning to increase electricity generation from 1980 MW in 2010 to 5000 MW by 2015.
West African Gas Pipeline Company (WAPCo), operators of the project, began a series of project inauguration in December 2009, ahead of its planned start of commercial operation scheduled for this year. However, works are ongoing in the construction of a compressor station in Badagry, to enable higher volumes of gas to be transported from Nigeria to Benin, Togo, and Ghana. Managing Director of WAPCo Mr. Jackson Derickson, said at the company’s recent stakeholders’ forum in Lagos, that once this phase of the construction was completed and the facilities inaugurated, WAPCo would have the compression capacity to deliver to the VRA, enough gas to power four 110 MW turbines and also supply WAPCo customers in Benin and Togo.
The government of Ghana had earlier disclosed that the completion of the WAGPP would cost $1 billion instead of the estimated $600 million, representing an increase of 70 per cent, owing to the delay in the implementation of the project.
When completed, the pipeline will supply natural gas from oil fields in the Niger Delta through the Escravos-Lagos pipeline system to thermal power stations in Benin, Togo and Ghana for electricity generation.