Embrace yourself for long blackouts (dumsor) – Energy Ministry
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Ghanaians must brace themselves for an intensified load shedding exercise following Nigeria’s decision to cease the supply of gas to Ghana.
A Daily Graphic report stated that the situation was caused by labour unrests in Nigeria.
This means a shutdown of the Asogli Power plant which provides 180 megawatts of energy to the national electricity grid.
The spokesperson for the Energy Ministry, Edward Bawa in an interview on Citi Prime News corroborated the report stating that the Volta River Authority (VRA) on Tuesday formally informed the Ministry of the labour unrest in Nigeria.
“We were informed through VRA that there had been some labour unrests in Nigeria, particularly where the area where we get our gas from and therefore, all the workers had laid down their tools,” he explained.
This has consequently curtailed the supply of gas to Ghana.
Bawa also disclosed that some thermal plants use natural gas especially the Asogli thermal plant therefore; the plant will be shut down.
He was quick to add that some thermal plants are able to use both natural gas and light crude oil which will help sustain the provision of electricity to consumers.
But he pointed out that reverting thermal plants which rely on natural gas to light crude oil will increase operational cost since crude oil is expensive than natural gas.
Speaking about the ongoing load shedding exercise, Bawa explained that “some units have gone off while TICO and TACO also being out of operation…will make the load shedding exercise a bit more challenging than it has been.”
He said the Ministry has devised a strategy by instructing the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) to publish the current levels of electricity which is being shed to enable Ghanaians plan their activities.
Bawa gave the assurance that the Ministry is working to ensure that in the long-term, such a situation will “have a backup…by bringing in emergency power badges that will be brought in from Turkey. That is a total of 450 megawatts for situations like this.”
By: Efua Idan Osam
ABOUT: Nana Kwesi Coomson
[email protected] An Entrepreneur, Corporate Social Responsibility, Corporate Communications Executive and Philanthropist. Editor-in-Chief of www.233times.com. A Senior Journalist with Ghanaian Chronicle Newspaper. An alumnus of Adisadel College where he read General Arts. His first degree is in Bachelor of Arts - Political Science (major) and History (minor) from the University of Ghana. He holds MSc in Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and Energy with Public Relations (PR) from the Robert Gordon University in the United Kingdom. He is a 2018 Mandela Washington Fellow who studied at Clark Atlanta University in USA on the Business and Entrepreneurship track.
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