Ghana’s $180m gas debt threatening our survival - WAPCo
The West African Gas Pipeline Company (WAPCo) has stated that the $180 million the Volta River Authority (VRA) owes Nigeria Gas (N-Gas) is threatening its (WAPCo’s) survival as a company.
As transporter of the gas to Ghana, WAPCo said supply would be cut to Ghana by Friday if the debt was not settled.
“We find it unfortunate that the debt situation has been allowed to deteriorate to the point where it now jeopardises WAPCO’s very existence as a company,” WAPCo Managing Director, Walter Perez said at a press conference Wednesday.
“And in doing so, it also jeopardises the only viable option of providing sufficient, on time, offtake assurance for Ghana’s TEN and Sankofa developments – the only viable option.”
Mr Perez added that President Mahama had intervened to curtail the impending gas cut-off by asking the Public Utilities Regulatory Commission (PURC) to take action to increase electricity tariffs to offset the debt.
He said if the country was not able to do that, “then things will really fall apart”.
Mr Perez, however, expressed hope that as a significant shareholder in the company, Ghana would pay its debt and not allow the company to "go under".
In an earlier interview on Monday, an official of WAPCo told the Daily Graphic that, “For those of us at WAPCo, the payment for transportation is our only source of income. Therefore, we are down financially as we speak. They owe us more over $82 million and paid only about $10 million for the July supply. The rest is yet to come."
The VRA is said to owe N-Gas more than $182 million and the Ghana National Gas Company (Ghana Gas) about $150 million - a development which is said to be crippling operations of the two companies.
Ghana has a deal with Nigeria to receive a contractual 120 million standard cubic feet (mmscf) of gas daily, and the government has in the past, held several discussions with Nigeria over the payment of the long-standing debt.
If N-gas goes ahead to cut gas supply to Ghana on Friday, it would exacerbate the power crisis currently confronting the country.
