Energy Minister promises dumsor-free Yuletide

The Minister of Energy, Mr John-Peter Amewu, has assured Ghanaians that this year’s Christmas and beyond will be free from power outages, popularly called dumsor.

With the recent power outages solved, the minister gave an assurance that there was enough generation to guarantee power for all during the festivities and for other social and economic activities to propel development.

Speaking after an inspection tour of various ongoing works at the Aboadze Power Enclave in the Shama District in the Western Region, Mr Amewu said: “I must say that we are working seriously to ensure that we do not witness any erratic interruptions.”

The work to ensure power availability, he said, was on the field and that the team at the ministry would not let Ghanaians down but constantly work to ensure that targets were met and value delivered to the country.

The tour

Mr Amewu inspected work on the extension of pipelines from Inchaban to the shore and the link to the point where the 470MW Karadeniz Powership Osman Khan will be stationed.

He also toured the Amandi power project, the switchyard constructed in readiness for power from the Karpowership and Amandi, and the metering station at the Aboadze Power Enclave where work is progressing steadily.

The ministry, he said, expected the timely completion of the project, since any delay could have serious repercussions on the cost of energy generation
“Bringing the Karpowership to Sekondi/Takoradi has enormous benefits to the country and, therefore, our prime focus is to get it done and done well,” he said.

With the completion and hooking of the Amandi and Karpower to the grid, he said: “I can assure you that it will mean more consolidation of power for industrialisation and social benefits.

“With the relocation, we will bring the plant closer to where the feed (gas) is and we expect to save a lot of the cost of transportation of the gas, which is currently at $2.1 per million British thermal units (MMBtu). Therefore, if we bring the plant closer we will avoid that cost,” he said.

Background

Initially, the Karpowership was to deploy its 470MW Karadeniz Powership Osman Khan to the Sekondi Naval Base by the second half of this year, in line with the government’s plans to ensure full utilisation of gas resources from the Western enclave, but the project could not be executed as scheduled because of technical challenges.