Contrary to media report that Nigeria is importing gas from Ghana, the Chief Director,
Ministry of Energy and Petroleum Ghana Thomas Akabzaa has said that the report is wrong rather it is Ghana that is importing gas from Nigeria.
Speaking to newsmen at an event in Lagos, last week, Mr. Akabzaa said that “basically Nigeria is supposed to give us gas under the West African Pipeline deal which they first sell to the
West African Gas Company and the gas is transmitted to Ghana, so Nigeria supplies gas to Ghana currently”.
However, he said that there was a big challenge because Nigeria’s had not been supplying the gas adequately according to contractual terms as a result of the privatization in Nigeria that saw more gas companies came up.
According to him, “there are upcoming Nigerian companies that need gas, so the gas supply to Ghana is very erratic; it is about 45 million cubic feet a day; enough to cover about 200 million but the contractual volume was supposed to be 130 million cubic feet a day, so there is a very strong short fall there, the challenges ranges from various competing power plants in Nigeria and pipeline vandalism”.
He did not think that Ghana can supply gas to Nigeria now because Ghana’s own national gas requirement was huge and they are under contract to sell power to countries like Togo, Benin and Ivory Coast.
The Chief Direct said that Ghana generates about 3000million of electricity but that was not enough considering the energy needs of the nation but that the nation was planning to improve on it.
“Currently we are generating a total capacity of 3000million but this is below the mark, we are expecting that b y 2016 we will have 5000million but even then, recent analysis indicates that the 5000million will be below what the population requires, therefore we have raised our target to 7500million by 2016”.
He further stated that Ghana had a 2.5 million solar energy plant, the biggest in the sub-region and had a very robust system transmission that connects the entire country and also Togo, Benin, and Nigeria, then Ivory Coast and Burkina Faso and hoping to expand it even more, so that they will be able to compete with Nigeria.
