The West African Gas Pipeline (WAGP) project which will transport natural gas from Nigeria to Benin, Ghana and Togo, will come on stream in mid-2005, an official statement said yesterday.

The project's managing director, Dennis Fahy, said construction work on the $450 million project will begin in March 2004, the statement from the office of Nigeria's Presidential Adviser on Energy said. Fahy, speaking on a visit to the permanent secretary of the Ministry of Petroleum Resources, Hezekiah Oyedepo, called for the speedy enactment of the necessary legislation to give legal backing to the regulatory agency, the West African Gas Pipeline Authority (WAGPA), the statement said.

The project is designed to carry gas from the Escravos-Lagos Pipeline System to a terminal near Lagos from where it will be transported via a 620 kilometre-pipeline to the Takoradi thermal power station in western Ghana.

The WAGP, which will be operated by the West African Gas Pipeline Company, has an initial installed capacity of 170 million standard cubic feet per day (mmscfd) which can be expanded to 450 mmscfd.