The Nigerian government has expressed commitment towards a continuous supply of gas to Ghana to operate her thermal power plants.

Top officials of the West African oil giant made the commitment at crunch meetings held with Ghana’s Minister for Energy and Petroleum, Emmanuel Armah-Kofi Buah, on Tuesday March 18, 2014.

The Energy Minister, accompanied by the Chief Executive of the Volta River Authority, Mr. Kirk Koffie, on Monday, went to Nigeria for discussions with suppliers, in a bid to boost gas supply to Ghana.

Ghanaians will recall that, as part of the media update on the current power situation held on Friday March 14, 2014, the Ministry did indicate that one of the causes for the load management exercise being carried out by the Electricity Company of Ghana was because of the erratic and very low levels of gas supply from Nigeria resulting in Ghana unable to power its thermal Power plants to full capacity.

After intense negotiations with the Minister for Petroleum of the Republic of Nigeria, Officials of the Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), Shell and Chevron, who together form N-Gas and who are the suppliers of the Natural gas to Ghana, the Ghanaian team was briefed about the causes of the low levels of gas supply and assured of a constant supply of 50MMBtu/d, up from the 30MMBtu/d or less being supplied in recent days.

The committed 50MMBtu/d falls far short of the contractual volumes of 123MMBtu/d but could immediately at least keep the Sunon Asogli Plant running,

The team also consulted with officials of the West Africa Gas Pipeline Company and the West Africa Gas Pipeline Authority and explored other potential private gas suppliers.

The on-going rationing of power across the country has been necessitated partly by a sharp drop in the volumes of gas received from Nigeria through the West Africa Gas Pipeline.