The West African Gas Pipeline Company Limited (WAPCo) has denied assertions that the power outage recorded Friday night in several parts of the country was as a result of technical challenges including limited gas supply at its end.
“WAPCo wishes to set the record straight that we did not have any technical issues and our facilities were, and still are, fully available to deliver gas,” the Company said in a press release on Saturday, July 8.
Signed by the General Manager for Corporate Affairs, Dr Isaac Adjei Doku, the press release explained that the cause of the outage was a downtime recorded by Ghana National Gas Company’s plant at Atuabo and, therefore, ran out of gas for WAPCo to transport.
“WAPCo transports gas based on its agreements with gas shippers,” the press release further explained.
“These shippers purchase gas from gas suppliers, transport the gas via WAPCo pipelines, and sell the natural gas to Gas Off takers (mainly power companies).
“When the agreed volume of gas is made available, WAPCo dutifully transports it to the shipper’s customers.
“The challenge yesterday was that the Ghana National Gas Company’s plant at Atuabo went down and therefore there was no gas available for WAPCo to transport.”
The Ghana Grid Company Limited (GRIDCo) and the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) had blamed the technical challenges at WAPCo for the outage.
They said the unexpected power cut was as a result of “gas supply challenges emanating from Atuabo and a WAPCo technical issue”.
Power has since been restored in the affected communities.
