Officials of the West African Gas Pipeline Company (WAPCO), has told Citi News that the government of Ghana has a standing arrangement with N-Gas of Nigeria to clear an outstanding debt of about 100 million dollars.
The comments follow reports from the Nigerian media that the Ghana government owes N-Gas some 160 million dollars.
In times past, the debt owed N-Gas resulted in a cut in supply of gas to the country which affected power generation.
In an interview with Citi News, General Manager, Corporate Affairs of WAGPCO, Harriet Wereko Brobbey, said the current government had instituted an arrangement for paying the debt which has largely been followed.
“There is an arrangement in place now which is that the debt will be paid in tranches and we are happy…We know that this arrangement is actually for the money to be paid to N-Gas.”
She explained that the agreement was reached when the NPP government came into office.
“There was a promise to pay, but the current arrangement that I am talking about was something which was arrived at by this government. There is an arrangement in place for the debt to be paid in tranches. We are happy that the payment of the first tranche has been largely made. We are expecting the remainder to be paid within the next week. The second tranche is around a 100 million, and we are expecting that it will be paid.”
N Gas Limited, a company owned by the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, Chevron and Shell, buys gas from oil companies in Nigeria and transports to Ghana through the $1bn WAGP.
The pipeline, which is operated by the West Africa Pipeline Company Limited, was built to supply natural gas from Nigeria to customers in Benin, Togo and Ghana.
N-G has an off-take agreement with Ghana to supply 120 million standard cubic feet of gas per day to the VRA, but supply to the country has fallen short of the contractual volume in recent years.
-Citifmonline