Yemisi Izuora/ Agency Report
Ghana Gas Company has announced recording an improvement in its gas supply.
The company put current supply at excess of over 140 million standard cubic feet of gas per day, which makes it the country’s highest reserves since 2009.
The company noted that the development came following sustained supply from Nigeria after a year breakdown on gas supply to Ghana, Togo and Benin, due to pipeline damages by a vessel in Togolese waters.
Before then, gas supply was barely up to fifty per cent of the required expectation, and when supply recommenced after the pipeline was fixed, there was no improvement for quite a while until lately, when the volumes being supplied to Ghana dropped to a record low level between the range of 30 million and 50 million standard cubic feet per day.
The situation brought severe power generation challenges for the solely gas-reliant Sunon-Asogli Power Plant at Kpone near Tema (200 megawatts).
Nigeria holds around 180.1 trillion cubic feet of gas reserves in 2014 the largest in Africa and has the second largest oil reserves of 37.1 billion barrels in the continent, according to BP Statistical Review of World Energy 2015.
Despite the abundance of hydrocarbon resources, Nigeria faces challenges in drawing investments, as the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) noted in February that oil production has been “hampered by instability and supply disruptions, while the natural gas sector is restricted by the lack of infrastructure to monetize natural gas that is currently flared.”
At the inception when the West African Gas Pipeline (WAGP) started delivering gas, Volta River Authority, VRA, was unable to consume all the incoming gas, and, perhaps, now more than ever, the stretch of the pipeline between Tema and Takoradi is being utilized; gas from Nigeria has been quietly going to Takoradi due to increased volumes and due to challenges with Ghana’s own gas on the FPSO Kwame Nkrumah.
A statement from Mr. Kofi Ellis, Business Development Manager of the VRA to business newspaper at Business & Financial Times on the sidelines of the Ghana Gas Forum in Accra recently, he said: “Currently, we are getting in excess of 140 million standard cubic feet per day of gas from Nigeria.”
According to Managing Director, West African Gas Pipeline Company (WAPCo), Mr. Walter Perez, “the Nigerian gas sector has simply found some peace, with no pipeline vandalism in the last few months, is the main reason supply to Ghana has increased significantly, and the other component, is that some of the policies of the former government in Nigeria had been to invest in pipeline infrastructure and also in gas production, and we are seeing that those plans are coming through; they are actually being completed ”
This increasing supplies is actually a confirmation that there is a lot of encouraging evidences on the gas front in Nigeria, WAPco and N-Gas are not unmindful of the competition Ghana gas brings.
There was a sense of this in the statement of the Nigerian Minister for Petroleum Resources as far back as November 2014, at an emergency meeting in Accra of the committee of ministers of the four countries in the deal. Ghana Gas, at the time, had just begun pumping about 30million standard cubic feet of gas per day (MMSCFD) to Aboadze.
The minister’s representative at that meeting reminded Ghana, Togo and Benin that gas from Nigeria would remain the most competitive in the sub-region.
“Nigeria is unconditionally committed to the objectives of the West Africa Gas Pipeline Project,” the minister assured.
At the recent Ghana Gas Forum, Walter Perez re-echoed and reassured gas recipient nations that gas from Nigeria remained “the most competitive” in the West African sub-region.
Recall that an agreement to proceed with the Offshore Cape Three Point integrated oil and gas project in Ghana has been a major boost to the country’s plan to reduce its dependence on gas supply from Nigeria.
The agreement which was signed by Italian oil major, Eni, Vitol and Ghana National Petroleum Corporation with the President of Ghana and the Minister of Petroleum, Eni said in a statement on its website.
The OCTP project will provide domestic gas supply to Ghana’s thermal power plants for more than 15 years.
First oil is expected in 2017, first gas in 2018 and the peak production will be 80,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day in 2019, according to Eni.
The OCTP integrated project is a deep offshore development, which comprises oil and non-associated gas fields and will access around 41 billion cubic meters (1.45 trillion cubic feet) of gas and 500 million barrels of oil in place.
The integrated nature of the oil and gas development provides an economically robust project allowing the country to achieve a competitive gas price which will support its economy, said Eni.
It said that the OCTP fields would continuously supply Ghana’s thermal power system, from 2018 to 2036, adding that the supply would be secured thanks to long term contracts with the Government of Ghana.
