Ghana earned over $400 million from oil export last year- President Mills

President John Evans Atta Mills on Thursday disclosed that Ghana earned a total of $444,124,724 from the sale of Ghana Group’s oil lifting of 3,930,189 barrels of crude oil.

He said some challenges in production at the Jubilee Oil Field had been scaled down pending the completion of a remedial programme.

Speaking on the energy sector in the State of the Nation Address, President Mills said government would continue to make full public disclosure of all oil lifting and revenues accrued as Government sought for successes in on-going oil and gas exploration in other areas of the country.

President Mills said the Ministry of Energy and the newly established Petroleum Commission were positively keeping a close eye on the matter.

He noted that Ghana National Gas Company Limited (Ghana Gas) which was charged with responsibility to build, own and operate infrastructure required for gathering, processing, transporting and marketing of natural gas resources in the country had commenced with the development of gas infrastructure.

President Mills said completion of the project would stimulate diversification of the national economy.

On electricity, he said Government had installed an additional 378 megawatts to the 1,800 megawatts of energy generation capacity inherited in 2009.

“By the end of 2013, power generation should reach about 3,300Mw, an over 80 per cent increase in the generation capacity we came to meet.”

“In all honesty, the phenomenon of “dumsor, dumsor” is not as bad as it used to be at the time we took over the management of affairs of the State and it is our determination to continue to work to make the situation much better than it is currently.”

He noted that from 2009 to date, over 1,700 communities had been connected to the national power grid under the various rural electrification projects initiated by government.

“We are aiming to extend electricity to a further 4,000 or more communities covering all the Regions in the country.”

President Mills reiterated government’s commitment towards the provision of street lights to all Regional capitals and eventually to all municipal and district capitals in the country.

On water provision, he said Government would construct 20,000 boreholes across the country within the next four years in an effort to improve on access to potable water in the country

President Mills said the water production facility at Kpong was expected to produce 40 million gallons of water daily to the inhabitants of Accra, Tema and its environs this year to ease the perennial water shortages that usually hit those areas.

He said Government had absorbed the five per cent contribution by communities to the capital cost of construction of rural water systems in rural communities.

“The Kpong Water Expansion Project is also expected to add 40 million gallons of water daily to the Accra-Tema Metropolis.”

President Mills said the many interventions had been developed to increase urban water production from the present 62 per cent to 80 per cent in 2015.