Tullow Ghana Limited’s planned 15-day shutdown of operations at its offshore Jubilee oilfield from February 3, 2017 will not result in power outages, Alfred Ogbarmey, Public Relations Officer of Ghana Gas, has said.

Measures have been put in place to ensure that the period given for the shutdown stays within in order to avoid power outages locally known as 'DUMSOR'

The shutdown is to enable works on inter-connection between the Tweneboa-Enyenra-Ntomme (TEN) fields and the Jubilee Field for gas exportation from the FPSO Atta Mills.

The interconnection between Ghana’s first and second operating oil and gas fields will enable evacuation and export of additional natural gas from the TEN fields through the 58km offshore pipeline of the Ghana Gas to its onshore Atuabo Gas Processing Plant.

There are fears the shutdown will lead to power outages. Mr Ogbarmey said: “I do not think within the 15 days of the shutdown, there will be power outages, unless something untoward happens that results in low production or if the Tullow go beyond the 15-day period. When they go beyond that, of course there will be an impact. So, the possibility [of power outages] is there but I believe that based on the work the ministry is doing, they will not exceed the 15-day period.

“The shutdown has happened before in the past – there were some maintenance works that we at Ghana Gas undertook but it did not last 15 days, it was within eight days.

But Tullow also did some and went beyond 15 days, but there was no power outage. There was also a time Tullow went off for two and half days but there were outages.

Whether there will be an outage or not depends on the availability of gas as well as the demand, so it depends on the supply and demand at any given time.”