Officials of the West Africa Gas Pipeline Company (WAPCo) have said that the pipeline is ready to operate at full capacity, which means it will be able to transport to Ghana all the contractual volume of 120 million cubic feet of gas per day, if it becomes available.

Currently, the country receives between 70million to 80million cubic feet of gas per day from Nigeria through the pipeline -- a major concern to the Volta River Authority which needs a lot of gas to power its thermal plants.

The pipeline resumed gas supply after repair works were completed on it in July 2013, just about a year after a ship’s anchor damaged it in Togolese waters.

Meanwhile, Walter Perez, on secondment from Chevron, one of the shareholders of WAPCo, has taken over from Charles Adeneji as Managing Director of the company.

Until his appointment, Walter Perez was General Manager at Angola LNG-SOMG, a company formed by the Shareholders of Angola LNG to operate the Angola LNG pipeline network that supplies natural gas from offshore Angola to the LNG plant in Soyo, Angola.

The gas pipeline

The 678 km WAGP links into the existing Escravos-Lagos pipeline at the Nigeria Gas Company’s Itoki Natural Gas Export Terminal in Nigeria and proceeds to a beachhead in Lagos. From there it moves offshore to Takoradi in Ghana, with gas delivery laterals from the main line extending to Cotonou (Benin), Lome (Togo) and Tema (Ghana). The Escravos-Lagos pipeline system has a capacity of 800million ft3/d, and the WAPCo system will initially carry a volume of 170million ft3/d and peak over time at a capacity of 460million ft3/d.

About WAPCo

WAPCo is owned by Chevron West African Gas Pipeline Ltd (36.7%); Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (25%); Shell Overseas Holdings Limited (18%); and Takoradi Power Company Limited (16.3%); Societe Togolaise de Gaz (2%)l and Societe BenGaz S.A. (2%).