$120m needed within weeks to abate load shedding

• Posted on October 17, 2014October 17, 2014
• by Nana Kwesi Coomson
• Comment

Ghana needs to urgently raise at least 120 million dollars to purchase crude oil to power its thermal plants as the power crisis worsens.

This is the country’s power producers’ short-term response to the crippling power crisis currently confronting the country.

The amount would cover the cost of about 900,000 barrels of crude oil (about two cargos), Director of Public Affairs at the Public Utility Regulatory Commission (PURC) told Joy News on Thursday.

The country is in dire need of the money, she indicated. And the cash should be raised within a week or the next few weeks, she stressed.

The utilities regulator, the PURC, has been leading crisis talks with government and the utility providers.

The PURC, she said, would convene another meeting tomorrow, Friday, to decide on which body, including government, should immediately provide the $120m.

Electricity producer, Volta River Authority, has not been generating enough power for months as a result of unreliable supply of gas to feed the country’s thermal plants, and the dwindling resources at the hydro dams. This has forced the distributor, Electricity Company of Ghana into a load shedding exercise. The company is said to be shedding about 400 megawatts of power now, and this is expected to go up between 500 and 600 megawatts next week.

Though the 900,000 barrels would not end the load shedding, it would at least minimize the impact, Nana Yaa Jantuah remarked.

“The next few weeks is a very critical moment where we are seeing a loading shedding of about 500 to 600 megawatts…tomorrow we will conclude, we will decide on how the crude oil purchase would be funded,” she said.

Meanwhile, she noted that the PURC has been monitoring the ongoing load shedding exercise and has realised “consumers go off more than they are supposed to” as well as the lack of communication between the ECG and consumers.

By: Isaac Essel