Tullow Ghana Limited has announced the reduction of gas supply from FPSO Kwame Nkrumah due to critical turret repair works.
A press release issued yesterday by Ghana National Gas Company (Ghana Gas) and signed by Alfred Ogbamey, Corporate Communications Manager, stated that Tullow had consequently revised downward available natural gas supply from the present 90 million standard cubic feet of gas a day (mmscfd) to 50 mmscfd.
The revised nomination, according to Ghana Gas, will last between 1 and 21 November 2016.
By the foregoing, Ghana Gas has also informed the Volta River Authority (VRA), its main downstream gas off-taker and other partners, of the reduction in the availability of lean gas and associated gas products within the period as a result of challenges at the Jubilee Field.
Implications
There are renewed fears of likely power outages owing to this announcement, as the country’s gas enclave at Atuabo are powered by gas supply from Ghana Gas.
With the reduction in the gas supply, power supply could be affected hugely.
It would be recalled that some parts of Accra recently experienced power outages which sparked fears among customers of the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) that ‘dumsor’ had resurfaced.
But the Deputy Power Minister John Jinapor and the ECG quickly came out to strongly allay fears.
Tetteh Okyne, Director of Operations at ECG, said that the power cuts had nothing to do with load shedding and that maintenance works on its bulk supply points (BSPs).
According to Mr Okyne, the power distributor embarked on planned maintenance works following interruptions at ECG’s bulk supply points which culminated in the power cuts.
ECG also announced that it planned to position engineers at strategic locations to promptly attend to emergency calls to shorten the intervention time and re-schedule non-critical projects to reduce power cuts.
Currently, government imports about 600,000 barrels which is able to take care of the energy supply needs of the country for 40 days.
By Samuel Boadi