VRA Spends $55m On Crude Oil


Bernard Kofi Ellis
The Volta River Authority (VRA) has disclosed that it spends about $55 million on light crude oil to run thermal plants every two weeks.

Bernard Kofi Ellis, Director, Planning and Business Development, VRA, who revealed this at a conference recently, said it cost VRA a lot of money to run thermal plants on fuel.

$55 million is spent on fuel alone in two weeks not to talk of administrative cost, among others, he said.

Kofi Ellis said VRA was facing difficulties in purchasing fuel to run thermal plants, stating that the authority relies on banks for credit facilities.

This, he said, was because VRA does not get the required money from the Public Utilities and Regulatory Commission (PURC).

‘The money PURC collects for us is not enough and it does not even reach half of the amount VRA spends.’

Kofi Ellis said Government last year gave the Authority $600m to purchase light crude oil when the situation became critical.

‘Government must continue to support us because energy is core to this economy, if we miss it the economy collapses,’ Kofi Ellis said.

He said VRA currently needs gas to run its thermal plants since it is less expensive and more efficient.

In view of that, Mr Ellis said Ghana will continue to d pursue Nigeria for gas in spite of the current difficulties.

He said, ‘The only reason we are pursuing Nigeria is because they have abundance of gas and it’s cheap.

‘We need cheap electricity and anywhere there is cheap gas, no matter how difficult the terrain is we would want to pursue.’

Kofi Ellis said the Nigeria government wants to improve its power sector by providing its citizens with uninterrupted power supply.

‘This has accounted for the difficulties the country is having with Nigeria to supply us with gas, but we will continue to pursue them,’ he said.

Kofi Ellis said government was also in talks with other independent gas processing companies in Nigeria to supply Ghana with gas.

Ghanaians are currently undergoing a severe load-shedding exercise characterized by unannounced power outage across the country.

The Authority gave assurance that the erratic power supply situation was likely to improve by the end of June when most of the faulty power units would be back in service.

 
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By Cephas Larbi

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