Takoradi, Nov. 18, GNA - The West African offshore gas pipeline from Nigeria to Ghana has been completed but there are few difficulties, Mr Jack Derickson, Managing Director of West African Gas Pipeline Company (WAPCo)on Wednesday announced.

In an address read for him by Mr Aderemi Oladapo, General Manager of WAPCo in-charge of Operations at a stakeholder forum, Mr Derickson said in April this year, the company supplied gas to the Volta River Authority (VRA) station at Aboadze under an interim sales arrangement.

However, he said, the company since May this year has ceased to receive gas supply due to the destruction of several hundred kilometres of gas supply pipelines in the Niger Delta region.

Mr Derickson said the company's compressor station in Lagos, which would enable it to transport higher volume of gas from Nigeria to Ghana and to Benin, was still under construction.

In addition, he said, the facilities including the regulating and metering stations that would enable gas to be received from offshore in Tema, Lome and Cotonou were expected to be completed in the first quarter of 2010.

He said once they were completed, WAPCo would have the compression capacity to deliver to VRA enough gas to power four 110 megawatt turbines= as well as supply customers in Benin and Togo.

Mr Derickson said under its Community Development Programme, the comp= any had provided health, education and sanitation facilities to a number of communities at a total cost of about GH¢830,000.

Ms Emelia Arthur, Shama District Chief Executive in a statement read for her called on stakeholders involved in the project to put in measures to protect WAPCo pipelines and other properties in the sea.

She advised fishermen in the area to desist from using illegal fishing methods like the use of dynamite so as not to destroy the pipelines.

Ms Arthur said the citing of WAPCo at Aboadze would facilitate the establishment of industries in the area adding that investors from India have been to the area and were considering establishing a fertilizer processing plant.

Mr Patrick Akwasi Yeboah, Health, Environment and Safety Manager of WAPCo, said the gas project was safe and the pipelines were well designed=

and properly tested before they were laid adding they would not pose any danger unless damaged by a third party. Mr Yeboah advised encroachers to keep away from the area in order to check against activities such as bush fires.