Ghana needs more facilities to ensure continues flow of fuel - Deputy Minister of Energy

A Deputy Minister of Energy says Ghana needs to acquire more facilities that would ensure the constant flow of fuel to forestall shortages even in times of disaster.

According to Dr. Mohammed Amin Adam, “Every nation dealing with

petroleum products would want to have facilities for security of supply and also to allow for flexibility, so if there’s a problem on one facility we’d have a substitute to continue the supply of the product.”

He was inspecting the Oil Berth at the Tema harbour in the company of officials from the Ministry of Energy,the National Petroleum Authority (NPA) and the Harbour Master to get first hand information on damages caused to a fuel loading arm.

The Harbour Master, Captain Christian Yeboah-Asante, had told the entourage that on the 25th of May 2018, around 1300 hours, a rainstorm swept through the habour at a time the loading arm was attached to MT Junefrau Explorer which was discharging LPG.

“So the vessel opened up and the arm went in the direction of the vessel which caused it to bend extensively,”he said.

According to him, normally when they were alerted by the Meteorological Services Department, they stopped all operations till such storms subsided, “But this time the duration they gave failed; we were expecting it around 1500 hours hundred hours but it happened at 1300 hours.”

Dr. Adam said, “We’ve come to that point where we need more facilities, and what has happened here demonstrates further, and we’ll think about it with the view to getting more information and taking a firm decision, and if it’s necessary to do that now or in the medium term, government wouldn’t hesitate to take action in that direction so that we can have security of supply and flexibility.”

He observed that the amount of inflows of products through these facilities was up to 80 per cent, “So if you have that figure coming through your jetty, it means any mishap could grind your ability to supply fuel to the market to a halt and government wouldn’t sit down for this to happen.”

He assured that government was very responsive and proactive “and that’s why we’ve moved in quickly to see how we can restore the arm to resume the offloading of LPG.”

He again assured that there would be no shortage of LPG because there were alternative routes that government was going to activate through the

National Petroleum Authority (NPA) to ensure uninterrupted supply to the market.

The Acting Chief Executive Officer of NPA, Mr. Hassan Tampuli, assured that the material to be used for the repairs would be brought in by Friday, June 1,2018 and that NPA had a window of seven days to fix the problem.

He said the NPA had nearly two and half weeks supply of LPG which would be able to sustain Ghana.

He observed that the old Boxer Jetty at the Takoradi harbour would be activated to serve as a temporal loading point until the problem was solved, and that Ghana Gas was expected to increase their daily production to cover demand.