Atuabo Gas plant to begin test-run by end of August

The Ghana Gas Company is to test-run the gas processing plant at Atuabo by the end of August to be followed by the introduction of the first gas from the Jubilee field to the facility.

The testing of the plant is to ensure the functionality and integrity of the gas processing facility which is about 99.7 per cent complete.

This was announced when Vice President Paa Kwesi Amissah-Arthur paid a visit to the gas processing project site at Atuabo in the Elembele District.

He expressed satisfaction with the state of work at the site and said he was impressed at the local content where Ghanaian engineers were at the frontline of operations.

“Am proud that the Ghanaian public universities have produced quality human resource that has helped in building the project,” he said and added that they must equally continue to manage the facility properly.

The Vice President said the savings the nation was likely to make when the Ghana Gas Project becomes fully operational was about $1 billion per year and this would ease the pressure on the country’s foreign exchange.

He said other benefits the country would derive from the gas project include reliable gas supply to the Aboadze Thermal plant to generate electricity and Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG) for domestic use.

Dr Ben Asante, the Operations Director of Ghana Gas Company, said the project stood at 99.7 per cent complete excluding offshore tie-in with Tullow oil and onshore tie-in with the Volta River Authority.

He said the plant would produce 107 million cubic feet of lean gas per day, 500 tons of LPG per day, 80 tons of pentanes per day and 45 tons of condensates per day.

LPG to be produced from the plant as a by-product is about 75 per cent of the current national demand of 240,000 tons per year and the initial revenue of Ghana Gas is estimated at $0.5 billion per year.

Dr Asante said the gas processing plant would provide reliable supply of gas for power generation which is equivalent to about 550MW for the initial 120 million cubic feet of gas per day.

He said the country would make savings of $500 million per year for substitution of Light Crude Oil with Gas as well as the associated foreign exchange savings estimated at $1 billion a year.

Dr George Sipa Yankey, Chief Executive Officer of the Ghana Gas Company, said so far the company had paid about GH?8 million as compensation to farmers whose crops were affected by the construction of the gas plant.

He said the company had paid compensation to large number of farmers and it is only left with few people to be remunerated and that the only body that did the valuation for both the land and crops was the Land Valuation Board.

Dr Yankey said the company had taken the necessary precautions to protect the pipelines as well as ensure that the facility was protected from corrosion.