The President, John Dramani Mahama, has assured Ghanaians that his government would work to keep the lights on amidst threats of power outages.
According to him, the stakeholders’ meeting held at his behest had birthed innovative ideas to safeguard the nation from what is popularly known as dumsor.
“Like I said, you elected us to solve the problems, not to put the blame on anybody else or to shoulder you with those problems, and so yesterday I called a meeting all the stakeholders in the electricity value chain, and they have been sitting since yesterday to today, to come out with innovative solutions so that we’re able to keep the lights on.
“And so I can assure you with some of the ideas they’ve come up with, we would make sure that your lights stay on and that we do not have dumsor as you popularly call it,” President Mahama assured.
He gave the assurance on Thursday, January 9, 2025 when he made his first public engagement, attending the 2025 national convention of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Mission in the Central Region.
CAUSE
President Mahama blamed the cause of the potential power cut on the Akufo-Addo government for delaying a planned shutdown of the West African gas pipeline for maintenance.
He said that this planned shutdown of the West African gas pipeline was supposed to take place in October last year, but the previous administration intervened and it was postponed till January.
“This is a long-delayed maintenance and has to be urgently done, but what it means is that there will be no gas available for all our generating plants in the east of Ghana,” President Mahama said.
EFFECT
If the West African gas pipeline is shut down, it would curtail the gas coming from Nigeria and the gas that comes in the reverse flow from Ghana’s gas processing plants in the West.
It means that the thermal generating plants in the thermal enclave would have no access to gas. The President indicated that, normally, to forestall blackouts because of the loss of almost 2,000 Megawatts of power, the government would have to make provision for fuel.
The fuel is unprocessed crude oil that needs to be processed, but “unfortunately, enough provision was not made for this eventuality.
“When the fuel arrives, it takes time to import it, three weeks to place an order and get delivered, and when it arrives you have to treat the fuel for another week and a half to make it ready for use in the generating plants, and so there’s a threat of power outages, but my brothers and sisters don’t despair.”
NO BASIS
Meanwhile, the former Minister for Energy, Herbert Krapa, has refuted claims that Ghana may face an imminent energy crisis due to the failure of the previous Akufo-Addo administration to stock adequate fuel.
In a statement shared on his Facebook page, Mr. Krapa dismissed the claims as having no basis, stating that before leaving office, the Akufo-Addo administration ensured the availability of sufficient fuel for power generation.
He detailed that Cenpower was operating with light crude oil left by the previous government, while AKSA was continuing to receive heavy fuel oil for its power generation needs.
“These facts are easily verifiable with a phone call to both power plants. The responsibility of the new administration is to procure more liquid fuel to keep the lights on whenever liquid fuel becomes required to complement gas supply and to plan competently to avert power supply disruptions. We did it, and they can do it too – if they can,” Mr. Krapa added.
Mr. Krapa’s remarks come in response to Mr. Jinapor’s statement, in which the MP alleged that insufficient fuel stocks were endangering the nation’s energy security.
Mr. Jinapor, who serves as the co-chairman of the Transition Team Sub-Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, criticised the Akufo-Addo government for allegedly leaving inadequate reserves.
