The Minister of Finance and Economic Planning, Kwadwo Baah Wiredu has said that the deadline for natural gas to reach Ghana to turn turbines at the Aboadze Thermal Plant and other energy generation plants would not be met because of the activities of militants in the Niger Delta Region of Nigeria who have repeatedly vandalised the Escravos pipeline.
Ghana was to utilise gas from Nigeria by March this year but the Minister, speaking on an Accra based radio station, Peace FM, said the project which was designed to supply gas from Nigeria to Benin, Togo and Ghana and ultimately Cote D'Ivoire, would continue and hoped the problem would be resolved as soon as possible.
The Minister explained that the section of the pipeline in Ghana has been constructed and everything is ready for the gas to come.
The Vanguard Newspaper of Nigeria reported Dr. Edmund Daukoru as saying that the project was supposed to have been completed 18 months from the date of the Final Investment Decision (FID) and that this should have been in December last year.
"But we are in February and it is not yet completed because of a whole variety of reasons. So this meeting is being held to review jointly with WAPCO which is a bulk supplier to the three countries. Everything is coming out of Nigeria. WAPCO is the bulk supplier jointly between Chevron and Shell. We want to review the status of the project and be sure that we make up for lost time and be sure that further delay is mitigated as much as possible," he said.
He admitted that the project had largely been affected by the scenario in the Niger Delta, and urged the media to get the militants to appreciate the impact of their activities.
"I really don't want to go into the nitty-gritty of the causes of the delay. But it is a whole collection of things, including also the vandalisation of the Lagos-Escravos gas pipeline.
At the end of the day, all of us in one form or the other are losers. I think if you can carry this message of persuasion, you will be doing the nation a very big service.
"There is a clause called take or pay - if buyer is ready before seller, seller is obligated to the buyer and if seller is ready before the buyer, the buyer is obligated somehow to the seller. It is a take or pay clause to make sure the parties pursue the project in absolute good faith. We really have work to do and from what I am hearing, some of the issues are really serious and we look forward to jointly tackle them. I am hopeful that we will make progress," he said.
Dr. Daukoru hinted that despite the setback, Nigeria would be able to meet its contractual obligation to supply gas to its neighbour customers, adding that aspects of the project would be ready before the end of the second quarter of the year.
On commitments made by gas buyers, the Minister said there were a number of private sector users ready for the product, adding that institutional customers in Ghana have committed to take 122 million standard cubic feet of gas per day and 22 million standard cubic feet of gas per day each in Benin and Togo.
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