Operators of the Sunon Asogli Power Plant have told Citi Business News the plant is running at half capacity due to insufficient gas supply from the West African Gas Pipeline Company (WAGPCo).
The company which completed its phase two power plant in January this year is expected to add about 360 megawatt power to its supply.
But speaking to Citi Business News at the sidelines of the Energy Summit in Accra, the Chairman of the Sunon Asogli Power Plant, Li Xiaohai alias Kweku Lee stated that the company is considering importing fuel since it is losing millions of dollars.
“Actually we don’t have sufficient gas, as we are speaking we have only around 30mmscf per day from WAPGCo which is only sufficient for us to run one of the phase two machines,” he said.
“Due to this we converted another machine at the phase two plant to LSU. So we are lucky to get some LSU to run that machine. The whole phase one which is additional 200 megawatts is idle. So we are trying to solve it with some LNG supply,” he said.
Kweku Lee stated that the company has the capacity to produce about 560MW for the country, which will be enough to greatly improve the power supply for both domestic and commercial usage.
He was however unhappy the company was running at 50 percent capacity due to insufficient gas.
“So far we are only getting half of the fuel supply. We are not producing at full capacity. Out of the 560mw, we are producing about 250mw, 50 percent gas is not available so we are trying to resolve it with LNG,” he stressed.
He appealed to government to commence work on the reverse gas flow pipeline from Takoradi to Tema to enable Independent Power Producers(IPPS) have sufficient gas when the Gye Nyame Sankofa field is completed.
Meanwhile, the Energy Minister, Boakye Agyarko also announced at the summit that government’s decision to halt the implementation of some IPPs for now has prevented the country from losing about 700 million dollars annually.
