African Manager: Ghana begins gas production

Natural gas started flowing from Ghana’s offshore Jubilee Fields to a US$1 billion gas processing plant on Monday in an important step that will supply gas to thermal plants that have been starved of gas from the West Africa Gas Project in Nigeria and stabilise electricity production.

When in full production, the Atuabo Gas Processing Plant is expected to save the nation over US$500 million a year from importing light crude to power thermal plants, as gas costs barely half the price of light crude oil, officials said.

The flow of gas to the processing plant went ahead despite a last minute letter written by the Energy Commission to Ghana National Gas Company stopping the firm from receiving gas because it was "risky" to do so.

Ghana has pushed for the plant to use gas from its oilfields in the west of the country to produce electricity that is in critical supply because of irregular supply of gas from Nigeria, high cost of crude oil, scheduled maintenance of thermal plants and low levels of water in the country’s three hydro dams.
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