IT has emerged that Ghana owes Cote d’Ivoire $60million as at the end of December 2016 for power purchased.

Despite this, government sent a delegation to that country which successfully negotiated an increase in power supply to minimise the impact of rolling power cuts – ‘dumsor’ – during the recent shutdown of Floating Storage and Offloading vessel (FPSO) Kwame Nkrumah.

The Communications Officer at the Ministry, King A. Wellington, disclosed this in a statement issued yesterday.

The shutdown of the FPSO Kwame Nkrumah enabled Tullow to connect and commission gas supply system from the TEN fields to the Atuabo processing plant.

“We wish to advise that the work has been successfully completed and it is our expectation that power supply will return to normal by February 27, 2017.

“We wish to state that with the tie-in operation successfully completed, and coupled with the measures we put in place, including procurement of fuel and increased power supply from La Cote d'Ivoire, the situation will normalise from 27th February, 2017”, Wellington added.

He explained that the schedule for the completion of the works, which was originally slated from 3rd to 20th February 2017, had to be extended to February 26th 2017 due to certain operational difficulties experienced by Tullow Oil, the operators of the TEN Fields.

With regard to the power disruptions over the last three days, he noted that this was not related to a deficit in generation but due to faults triggered by the severe rainstorm that hit parts of the country, particularly in Greater-Accra, Ashanti and Central Regions, between 25th and 26th February 2017.

He added that the ECG is in the process of restoring power to those who may have been unfortunate to be affected by the outages.

“We wish to assure the public that essential infrastructural works such as the connection of the TEN Fields to the Atuabo Gas Processing plant will always be carried out in a prudent, safe and efficient manner.

“Nevertheless, there is always the risk of operational challenges which may temporarily affect power supply.

“These works are, however, necessary to move the nation from the state of ‘dumsor’ to a steady state where we can be assured of a constant supply of electricity”, he said.

Wellington further stated that ‘dumsor’ did not end with the election of a new Government even though Ghana has adequate installed generation capacity, only half is available due to various technical and financial challenges.

According to him, government is determined to address these challenges, adding that during this period, the country would continue to face an occasional temporary setback until Ghana moves to a more sustainable state of uninterrupted power supply.

The ministry promised to give customers regular operational updates of the power situation to ensure transparency as well as provide assurances of how effectively we are addressing the problems in the sector.