Ghana will stop importing gas by mid-2019, Vice President Dr Bawumia says

According to him, “Ghana has enough gas to power all our plants without relying on imported gas”.

He was speaking at an Economic Management Team town hall meeting in Accra on Wednesday, 3 April 2019.

He indicated that gas is cheaper than liquid fuel, adding that a policy decision has been taken “to switch largely to the use of gas in energy generation” in the country.

He was quick to add that most of the gas reserves in the country are located in the western part of the country even though most of the power generation plants are found easterly.

But the West Africa Gas Pipeline supplies gas from the east to the west and so “we are doing a reverse-flow to move the gas from the west to the east”.

Dr Mahamudu Bawumia Pulse Ghana

“The first phase of the reverse-flow will be completed this month”, he said, and “the final [phase] and completion of this work should be done between July and August, the phase two of it, after which, fingers crossed and God willing, we should not import any gas anymore. We will use all domestic gas.”

Dr Bawumia said the switch, which will be completed this year, will save the country some $300 million annually.

He said “Ghana has excess capacity in energy generation” but contracts with independent power producers (IPPs) are expensive and burdensome.

“Ghana is currently paying $24 million a month in excess capacity charges alone for the power we have not used. This will increase to about $41 million a month later this year”, with other IPPs expected to take off soon.”

“We have problems with transmission and the GRIDCo (Ghana Grid Company Limited) network is old and has been, thus far, unable to invest in high-capacity lines,” he added,

He was optimistic that the takeover of ECG (Electricity Company of Ghana) by PDS (Power Distribution Services) “should help bring in much-needed investments”.