Gas reduction to Aboadze power enclave

The Ghana National Gas Company (Ghana Gas) has reduced gas supply to Aboadze power enclave raising fears that Power blackouts in Ghana could further deepen.

Gas supply reduction has been linked to the confronting challenges facing the Floating Production Storage and Offloading (FPSO) vessel. the FPSO Kwame Nkrumah constrained the Jubilee partners to decrease gas supply to Ghana Gas from 87 million standard cubic feet a day (scf-d) to 47 million (scf-d).

The lead operator in the Jubilee fields, Tullow Oil, says the situation has been mainly accredited to bad weather conditions. The depraved weather conditions greatly affected the gas supply as the defective turret has not been working for some time now. The defective turret controls the anchoring system of the vessel.

According to Alfred Ogbamey, Ghana Gas Communications Manager, the company is currently receiving 46.7 million scf of wet gas from their upstream suppliers. The company then supplies 46 million scf of lean gas to the company’s main downstream off-taker. The supply from Ghana gas is based on the availability and nominations for the period

However, the Jubilee partners have indicated that they will spend more than US$345mto repair the turret on the FPSO vessel by 2017. The turret has immensely forced the partners to cut down gas production from the Jubilee fields.

Ghana’s energy generation is most likely to be affected due to shortage of light crude oil for the plants at Aboadze. Nonetheless, the current stock is said to have reached the minimum level and is yet to be restocked. The inadequate supply of the light crude oil has led to the loss of 230MW of power from the Aboadze thermal power enclave.

Power blackouts in Ghana

Additionally, plants that ran on both light crude oil and gas are facing the risk of being shut down due to the limited fuel. According to the sector engineers the situation may result to more power blackouts in Ghana.

VRA is currently unable to generate power from some of its turbines including those of the AMERI Plant that ran solely on gas. However, the Ministry of Power and VRA are set to meet on the issue this week.

From the beginning of February this year unpredictability of gas supply had been a challenge given that Tullow field developed engineering and mechanical challenges with its turret bearing.

Power blackouts in Ghana reached its peak in 2015 when Ghana’s largest opposition group held a protest against what they called the worst blackouts in a decade.