Aboadze thermal plant reverts to crude oil use

The Volta River Authority (VRA) has reverted to the use of light crude at its thermal plant at Aboadze in the Western Region.
It followed the disruption of gas supply from the Atuabo Gas Plant.

The interruption followed a shutdown of the Floating Production Storage and Offloading vessel, (FPSO) Kwame Nkrumah, for maintenance works.

The shutdown had affected production works at the Atuabo Gas Plant, which would not be able to pump natural gas to the Aboadze thermal enclave for power production.

Switching

The Deputy Minister of Power, Mr John Jinapor, told the Daily Graphic that following a notification served to government by Tullow Ghana, the VRA had commenced the switching processes to ensure power production and supply would not be intense.

"The adverse effect is that while the switching processes could take time and may or may not increase the hours of outages, government will require more money to procure light crude oil," Mr Jinapor pointed out.

Period of outages

The interruption in gas supply has raised fears that consumers could experience extended hours of outages, but Mr Jinapor discounted such fears, saying, "While I cannot specifically point out the number of hours consumers could stay without light, I am certain the switching processes would not go beyond Friday as some of the plants have already started running on the light crude oil."

Presently, there has been an improvement in the power supply situation with consumers enjoying a 24 hour supply and 12 hours off.