Nigeria to cut gas supply to Ghana over indebtedness

The Federal Government, Monday, threatened to cut gas

supply to Ghana’s power plants 100 million Ghanaian cedi

indebtedness.

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.