Ranking member on parliament’s energy and mines committee, John Jinapor, has revealed that the West African Gas Pipeline Company (WAPCo), is not being paid by government.

According to him, there are major contractual issues between government and WAPCo. In light of this, he indicated that WAPCo shut its pipeline a couple of days ago, although some emergency payments were made to necessitate its reopening.

Mr Jinpor stated that following power outages in the country on Friday, July 7, 2023, and the subsequent issuing of three statements from GRIDCo, ECG and WAPCo, he is “scandalized” by the turn of events.

…There’s a major problem there…. They are not being paid, WAPCo is not being paid. So, our relationship with WAPCo is not the best, so when you have an emergency it’s even difficult to fall on them. My information is that, that is why this statement with WAPCo came. Because there was an attempt to collaborate with WAPCo and WAPCo was lethargic, so ECG quickly went and wrote that… There are contractual issues and WAPCo is threatening to shut down or close that pipeline.”
John Jinapor

Furthermore, Mr Jinapor noted that the Ghana Gas Processing plant in the whole conceptualization process, is not supposed to go down as a result of power failure.

“If there’s anything that will put that plant down, it shouldn’t be because of power failure because it has three backup system. In fact the last one is the national grid; it doesn’t rely on the national grid, it has own power system, consumes its own gas and if one fails, the second generator picks up, the third one and then finally ECG picks up.”
John Jinapor

Maintenance of Ghana Gas Company pipelines

Citing reasons for the power outages, Mr Jinapor explained that the generators which should have been deployed are not functioning because Mantrak, the company mandated to service and maintain those plants has not been paid. He underscored that due to this, the energy committee will request for the maintenance schedule from the energy ministry and equally check from Mantrak to ascertain his “incontrovertible” fact.

“So, when plant one went down there was no backup. This plant shouldn’t go down because of a so-called power failure from one generator. I’m telling you that their maintenance culture is very bad and poor…”
John Jinapor

Furthermore, Mr Jinapor highlighted that per the financials of Ghana Gas, it appears to be one of the best. Owing to this, he revealed that for Ghana Gas to put itself in such a situation, where generators are not being maintained in accordance with the routine maintenance schedule, and the whole nation goes through this blackout period, it is unacceptable.

“Let’s NPP /NDC aside, this is unacceptable. That is why I’m calling for investigations into this matter… This is a serious matter, and beyond what the committee would want to do, energy ministry should take full responsibility and get into this matter – both from the communications point of view and the technical point of view.”
John Jinapor

Commenting on the power sector, Mr Jinapor highlighted that there are serious issues that are built up and it’s beginning to show. With this, he indicated that the IPPs are also threatening, as following their meeting with ECG, they got nothing.

“I have a video record, not audio, myself, the ECG MD and the Chamber of IPPs, he said at the time they closed that meeting, no payment had been made to them…”
John Jinapor

Moreover, Mr Jinapor urged government to commend the intervention of former President, John Dramani Mahama for his intervention into the IPPs issue. He noted that Mr Mahama at that moment, did not take advantage of government’s inability to pay.

“When you had our flagbearer, publicly appealing to these IPPs not to switch the plants off, that’s the highest level of patriotism an opposition leader can demonstrate… We were in a meeting, we discussed these issues, we briefed him and he was made aware we are on the brink and that if nothing is done, this country will witness power outages so monumental that it could even collapse the whole economy.”
John Jinapor