Blame Game Over Energy Crisis

... NDC MP Dazes Minister
... Tsatsu`s WAGP is lifeline for NPP
At the end of a two-hour debate over energy, the conclusion was that the Government’s lifeline hinges precariously on the West Africa Gas Pipeline to produce a fraction of the energy which Ghana needs to keep domestic lighting on, for the 136 megawatts of gas fired energy.

The debate was between National Democratic Congress’ (NDC) MP for South Dayi, Hon. Dr. Kwame Ampofo and the New Patriotic Party’s (NPP) MP for Efigya Sekyere West constituency and first Minister of Energy, Hon Albert Kan Dapaah. It was last Friday and the venue was Peace FM’s studios where the two clashed in a pre arranged toe to toe debate on air over the current energy crisis in which the NDC has consistently stated that NPP had contributed zilch to the current stock of energy and was rather frittering away on what the NDC had built over the years.

It emerged after the period that the NPP Government had not really added much in terms of energy since 2001 when they took over the reins of Government. What they did according to Dapaah was that they reined in subsidy, which the NDC Government had engaged in and racked up a debt of $200million with its attendant impact on the Government-owned banks, which were on the verge of collapse.

Dapaah was the first to speak, and started by appealing to his co-debater not to interrupt in the course of his submission and giving the assurance that he would do same when it was Dr. Ampofo’s turn.

He started with submission that debunked the NDC’s claims that since assuming power some six years ago it had not added a kilowatt to the energy needs of the country. He submitted that when the NPP assumed office, the NDC had started a retrofitting project on the Akosombo hydroelectric plant.

Mr. Dapaah said what they came to meet was a test process of the project by the NDC that saw the completion of work on one out of the six turbines. He said the NPP then continued with the retrofitting of the five other turbines and thus increasing the generating capacity of the Akosombo facility. On the basis of this retrofitting exercise, Mr. Dapaah was of the view that it was wrong for the NDC to continuously claim that the NPP had added nothing to the power sector.

He also accused the NDC for the current problems on the Volta Lake indicating that the NDC had gone against expert advice to misuse the lake at levels that rendered its usage very dangerous. The former energy Minister asserted that it was as a result of the mismanagement of the lake that the current problems had assumed a crisis level.

Mr. Dapaah who sounded as though he was trying to rescue the current Energy Minister, Mr. Kofi Addah, then noted that the government was so much committed to the energy sector such that it was vigorously pursuing the Bui Hydroelectric project and had also paid for Ghana’s 16% shares in the West African Gas Pipeline, the construction of which is already underway and which when completed will power the Abodze thermal plant at an affordable cost.

Then the NDC’s Dr. Ampofo came in. He also started by reiterating the point that the current government had indeed brought nothing on board as far as power was concerned.

To establish what the NDC did in terms of adding to the power needs of the country, he explained that from 1997 to 1998, the NDC government facilitated the construction of the Aboadze Thermal plant with an initial capacity of 330 megawatts. Then in 1999, the NDC government again facilitated a joint venture arrangement between VRA and CMS Energy of USA to expand the Aboadze Thermal Generation complex to 550 MW with the addition of two (2) 110MW combustion turbines. This was with the understanding that a further 110MW would be added in the future to bring the Aboadze Complex to a total of 660MW.

Dr. Ampofo then went on to talk about the retrofitting project on the turbines at the Akosombo hydro-generation facility with the view to increasing its capacity by about 15%. He pointed out that even though the retrofitting had been started by the NDC and funds for the work on all the six turbines had been acquired, the NPP still creates the impression that it had also added some generating capacity to Akosombo just by continuing with what the NDC had started.

Dr. Ampofo therefore made it clear that the retrofitting exercise was actually an NDC project and that it had acquired the requisite funds for the entire project. He noted that the original plan for the retrofitting project was that it was to be completed in 2005 and therefore wondered how the NPP could claim credit for a project that was on course.

Dr. Ampofo maintained that from various government documents including the President’s state of the nation addresses, it was manifest that the NPP was not doing anything to the energy sector even though several warnings had been given about the energy crisis facing the country.

Dr. Ampofo quoted from pages of the President’s State of the Nation’s address for different years to buttress the point that not much had been and was being done in the power sector to curtail the problem facing the country. He made reference to a statement by the president to the effect that over 400 communities had been connected to the national grid when it knew that nothing had been added to the generating capacity of the country.

He pointed out that government was aware the nation’s hydrological cycle shows that for every seven to ten years the nation would experience some drought and therefore needed to plan for it since the last occurred in 1998, during which the country experienced another power crisis the led the NDC to start work on the Aboadze project.

Mr. Kan Dapaah had stated in his earlier submission that what the NDC had done on one turbine at the Akosombo facility before it left office was just a test and that it was NPP that actually carried out the job. After Dr. Ampofo’s, Mr. Dapaah however conceded and observed that even for continuing with a project that was started by the NDC, the NPP deserved to be given credit since it was not uncommon in the political history of the country for a government to abandon projects started by its predecessor.

The Interior Minister also said the government had contributed and actually demonstrated its committment to developing the power sector by bringing down the 125MW Osagyefo Power Barge from Italy where it was still staying after it had been acquired by the NDC government.

The NDC’s Dr. Ampofo replied that even with that, it was significant for the ideas that led to the acquisition of the Barge to be acknowledged since the conceptualisation of a project is the difficult part and not putting the idea into practice.

Then came in Dr. Ampofo on the Bui-Hydroelectric project. The issue here was who had done something about the project and who had not. Kan Dapaah gave the first shot accusing the NDC of not having done anything about it even though the Dr. Hilla Liman administration that was overthrown through a military coup led by the NDC founder, Jerry Rawlings, had negotiated a loan for the project.

The former energy Minister said, on assumption of office in 2001, the NPP set up the Bui Secretariat, which was to look at how to carry out the project.

Then Dr. Ampofo zoomed in and said an Australian Engineering firm, SMEC had conducted feasibility studies on the project in 1976. He said in 1994, when the NDC was in office, the SMEC study was updated by Coyne et Bellier of France through a French government grant.

He argued that due to the need for thermal complementation, the Bui project was deferred for strategic and tactical reasons till the realization of the Aboadze thermal complex which he reiterated was now providing almost 50% of the power being used by Ghana at the moment and asked how the nation could have survived the current energy crisis but for the Aboadze plant.

Mr. Dapaah pointed out that the NPP government considered the use of thermal energy as being very expensive hence the resolve to have the Bui Project executed. But Dr. Ampofo punched a gaping hole into that argument asking whether the minister was suggesting that using light crude to power the plant was more expensive than not having power at all.

There was also the question of the importation of the generators, which also use fuel and were recently described by Dr. Wereko Brobby as toy generators.