We can’t accept the blame for Thursday’s power cut – ECG MD replies GNPC

The Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) says it can also not accept blame for Thursday’s power cut experienced in some parts of the country.

On October 26, the Ghana Grid Company Limited (GRIDCo) in a statement explained that the cause of the power cuts was due to limited gas supply to Tema leading to a shortage of 550MW at peak time.

The shortage led to the power outage on that Thursday night. GRIDCo subsequently apologized for the inconvenience caused.

Later on Saturday, October 28, the ECG and GRIDCo in a joint statement, announced the successful restoration of power as a result of the resumption of gas supply to the generating plants in Tema from Takoradi.

But the Ghana National Petroleum Corporation (GNPC), which receives gas from the West African Gas Pipeline Company for onward supply to the power plants, has absolved itself of blame for last Thursday’s power supply challenges.

In a press statement issued on Monday, October 30, GNPC said some “misinformed individuals depicting themselves as energy analysts” have blamed it for the outage.

According to the national oil company, some analysts had claimed that the incident happened due to their failure to pay West Africa Gas Pipeline Company Limited (WAPCO) its debt.

It explained that it is ECG that pays WAPCO directly or otherwise for gas transported.

“The gas is transported to the Independent Power Producers (IPPS) to generate power that ECG distributes to consumers as electricity. Ultimately, monies received by ECG after the sale of electricity is utilised to pay, either directly or indirectly, all the electricity service providers downstream of the value chain, including WAPCO.”

“Traditionally, ECG pays for gas transportation invoices through the Cash Waterfall Mechanism (CWM). However, funds received by GNPC from ECG have not been sufficient to pay for the WAPCO invoices, especially in recent times.

The Managing Director of ECG, Dubik Mahama, while speaking on PM Express on Monday, October 30, expressed disappointment over GNPC’s handling of the matter, saying the press release was unnecessary.

“What I know is that within the value chain, we are all supposed to work together. When I read their [GNPC] statement it saddens me because this is not something I was expecting because I felt the problem had been resolved and everybody was moving forward, and both GRIDco and ourselves had issued a statement to that effect, so it was neither here nor there, and I don’t even know why they should have even issued the statement in the first place” he argued.

But that being said, we work with something called the Cash Waterfall Mechanism (CWM) in distributing the resources under the collections that we make in a month. The new cash waterfall provides for tier one and tier two. So tier one is the IPPs, and I must say for four months now, the ECG has been paying the IPPs and ECG hasn’t failed, it has been constant with the IPPs, and you can check with all of them “he noted”.

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