Turkey power barges not important - Tarzan

Chief Policy Analyst of the Ghana Institute for Public Policy Options (GIPPO), Dr Charles Wereko-Brobby says the purchase of Turkey power barges is not important for the country.

According to the respected energy expert, Ghana’s energy problem has nothing to do with inadequate power barges, pointing out that the problem has to do with inadequate funds to purchase fuel to power the various plants already in the country.

“Why should we buy more plants while we owe Nigeria…how can you power the plants when the machines come?” he asked.

The former Chief Executive Officer of the Volta River Authority (VRA) explained, “Ghana’s installed capacity is 2,835 megawatts, but the peak capacity is between 1,500 to 2000 megawatts so what we need is to purchase fuel for the plants and purchase more plants,” adding, “Ghana owes Nigeria to the tune of $190 million and if we don’t pay, they will not supply us with gas”.

“The VRA owes Ghana Gas over $100m and if we don’t pay our debts, we will be plunged into more darkness in the years ahead because we can’t rely on VRA alone for its generation from the Akosombo Lake”. The water level for 8th October 2015 at the Akosombo Dam is 242 feet which is lower than the same period last year, and that means the Akosombo Dam cannot give us the power we want,” he further revealed.

Dr. Wereko-Brobby, who made the observations on Atinka AM Drive’s Nyansapo, further explained, “we don’t need more capacity, but we need more fuel because we have the capacity, but we can’t buy fuel to power the plants”.

Tarzan, as he is affectionately called, told AM Drive Host, Kwame Adinkrah that it was because of such challenges that he brought in the Strategic Reserve Plant (SRP) when he was at VRA “so that the moment the water level gets low, we use them”.

According to him, the Akosombo Dam should be 278 feet in order to reach full capacity but the level is low and this has plunged the nation into power crisis. “We went into dumsor because all the generators broke down, and there was no fuel to power the remaining plants”.

Speaking on the management of energy in the country, Dr. Wereko-Brobby said “good management is not crisis management. You must not wait for the challenges to come and you must avoid the crisis not to manage crisis as a manager”. The Akosombo Dam water level went down to the lowest ever during my time at the VRA, but there was no dumsor in the country,” the former Ghana@50 boss said.

The former VRA Boss said there was no load shedding because of the good management and independent decisions he took at the VRA to purchase the SRP, but added that he was sacked because of the noise people made about the none-use of the SRP "and due to the noise Dr. Paa Kwesi Nduom sold the plants and six months after, there was dumsor in the country”.

On the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG), Dr. Wereko-Brobby explained that the public institution must be run like a business so that management of the company can sue all government institutions that owe them.

Tarzan added that there is not enough generation so ECG cannot distribute enough and so the blame on them (ECG) should be minimal.

The GIPPO Chief Policy Analyst said the ECG has started its own generation but it has signed 29 Power Purchase Agreement (PPA) contracts of which only four are working now and this is also affecting the ECG in addition to the government debt of over GH¢4 billion

On Tema Oil Refinery (TOR), which has been dormant for over four years now, Tarzan said the state institution would have produced residual fuel to power the barges that are coming from Turkey, explaining, “if the Turkey barges come and we don’t buy the fuel, we will not have power and we are not interested in megawatts but gigawatt hours.”

Dr. Wereko-Brobby charged the VRA to take independent decisions in the interest of Ghanaians and make sure there is enough power generation, warning that political decisions will not help the power sector. He said the VRA has competent people to manage the power or generate power for the country and must be given the free hand to do so.