The Ghana National Gas Company, GNGC says its due diligence on the country's gas infrastructure project has rather saved the country, some 250million dollars. It comes in response to alleged reports of inflated charges by the company engaged to undertake the project, SINOPEC. But CEO of the Ghana National Gas Company, Dr George Sipa Yankey tells Joy Business his outfit has a group of industry experts ensure the country is not shortchanged. “The costing of our project is based on so many factors – similar projects worldwide and our intimate knowledge of the prices of various components. Luckily we have experts from some of our colleagues from West Africa Gas pipeline who just finished a project and they aer familiar with all these. So our cost for the project was heavily influenced by the experience and knowledge of some of our staff” he said As a matter of fact, SINOPEC had a budget for the project that amounted to about 998 million dollars. Because of our knowledge of the market and some of our experts’ experience, and through negotiations we were able to bring it down to 750million dollars, saving over the country 200million dollars. Additionally, this particular price has been frozen which means SINOPEC cannot inflate, over-invoice or under-invoice. So Ghana government is adequately protected" he added. He also dismissed reports that pipes being used for the gas infrastructure were of inferior quality. “Our gas- the jubilee gas is a dry one. It has no carbon dioxide, no hydrogen sulphide or any other corrosive components. With the characteristics of the composition of your gas, there is no need for internal coating however, Ghana Gas Company has gone a step further to externally coat the pipes in order to take care of corrosion.In addition we’ve increased the thickness of the pipes by 1.5 millimeters to withstand any corrosion. So the pipes that are being used are of high quality” he said.