The Chief Executive of the Volta River Authority, Kweku Awotwi has revealed that if the company is able to raise enough money to retrofit the country’s power generation plants, "those plants could run for another thirty years". Explaining the basis for the Authority’s demand for tariff adjustment and subsequent provision of quality service on Tarzan’s Take on Multi TV last Sunday, Mr. Awotwi stated that the VRA spent over one hundred million dollars retrofitting the six turbines at the Akosombo dam between the year 2002 and 2003. This according to him is "real money" that needs to be recovered for other operations. He added that the Authority has started the contractual works on the Kpong hydro power plant to carry out its major retrofitting. This he indicated will cost the VRA another fifteen million Euros. “If we are successful those plant will run for another thirty years” he posited. Dr Wereko-Brobby, who hosted the program, wondered why the Authority will be asking for "magical rate of return" if government as a major stakeholder has already paid for major investment of the country’s power generation projects. Mr. Awotwi clarified that government did not pay for all projects. He said apart from the Takoradi T1, T2, and T3 plants, VRA had to pay fully for the Akosombo, Kpong and other debts that accrued as a result of operations. He emphasized that “not all investments in the past have been made by government”. Kweku Awotwi also stated that the Authority has collected 170 million cedis out of a total debt of 200 million cedis the government owed from last year. He said it is the acquisition of crude oil which is putting a heavy toll on the Authority’s expenditure. According to him, VRA at one point spent 1.1 billion cedis to purchase crude last year. This year, it will spend 1.5 billion cedis on crude oil. He observed that with or without gas, the Authority will procure similar amount of crude in the future because "the country needs more gas than what is available" and also due to the number of plants they have. Other than that, they (VRA) may have to slowly run down their hydro plants in the "next few couple of years" and change over to run more thermal plants. He insisted, this will mean that the hydro-thermal mix will rapidly go up to about 50/50 using more crude oil.