Power outages have recently been attributed to a lack of natural gas to run power plants, according to the Electricity Company of Ghana’s managing director, Samuel Dubik Mahama.
He claims that the country’s primary energy provider, Nigeria Gas, is experiencing technical difficulties that are preventing the country from producing enough electricity.
While discussing the causes of power outages in some places, he made the revelation on Thursday’s episode of Joy FM’s Super Morning Show.
“We pick gas from Nigeria and they’ve been having some challenges so it affected the gas flow through the power plants in Ghana. We had some massive load pressure so we had to take steps to shed some load immediately because we didn’t have access to some liquid fuels so that is what led to the outages that happened two days ago,” he said.
The CEO of GRIDCo issued an apology on behalf of the company for its failure to inform the public. While the problems with Nigerian gas have not been solved, he said that other supplies have been acquired to keep the power plants running. So he is optimistic that the balance of power will remain stable for the time being.
“We should have informed you when we got that information so that everybody could adequately prepare. We are hoping that it doesn’t happen again. When we have such challenges we would share them with you immediately.
“The power that gets to us at the supply point is what we give to the public. So it is a whole food chain. Moving forward we should be okay, we’ve taken steps to ensure that we have alternative fuels for this period until Nigeria Gas sorts out its issues.”
Samuel Dubik Mahama
Mr. Mahama is a partner at the Dubik and Associates law firm and has over 12 years of experience in executive roles. He has worked in both the private and public sectors, mainly in the energy sector, and has extensive experience consulting for local energy, mining, and engineering firms. He also serves on the boards of several companies, including Wilkins Engineering Limited, De-Montag Company Limited, and Ghana Industrial Holding Company (GIHOC). Prior to his appointment as Managing Director of the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG), he was a board member of the ECG.
