Kwadwo Poku, the Executive Director of the Institute for Energy Policies and Research (INSTEPR), says he would have dismissed the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the Ghana National Petroleum Corporation (GNPC) if he were the president.
He criticised the GNPC Boss for not taking action to prevent the power outages despite being informed by the West Africa Gas Pipeline Company Limited (WAGPCo) about the potential shutdown of its pipelines due to unsettled debts.
His criticism follows recent power outages in parts of the country reigniting the dreaded memories of “Dumsor,” the persistent power outages that plagued the country in 2015.
He told Selorm Adonoo in an interview on The Big Issue on Citi TV on Saturday “I have a problem with GNPC. GNPC is our national oil company. They have money. For nothing at all they have the JOHL money. The 7% Anadarko shares that we bought. That account receives about $ 70 million every lifting.
“So as we speak, they have paid back the $164 million loan that the Ministry of Finance gave to GNPC and they have about $364 million sitting in their account. PIAC reported it in their report. So GNPC is sitting on money.”
“So the president for me should look at some of these CEOs who are not doing what they are supposed to do. And every time we have been in darkness, the CEO of GNPC is not in the country. In October he wasn’t in the country. This one he wasn’t in the country. And I am saying it publicly and challenging him to come out and prove otherwise.
“If somebody sent you a letter saying that I am going to shut my pipeline and you don’t attend to it and the pipeline gets shut If I am the president I will sack you. The CEOs and the state-owned enterprises should be up and doing.”
Meanwhile, Deputy Energy Minister Andrew Egyapa Mercer has announced that the challenges leading to recent power outages in the country have been completely resolved.
He assured Ghanaians that there would be no more intermittent power outages, commonly referred to as ‘Dumsor’.
In an interview with Bernard Avle on the Citi Breakfast Show on Citi FM, Mr. Mercer stated that the Ministry of Finance had, on January 10, 2024, disbursed $10 million to the WAPCo for gas supply, reinforcing the commitment to uninterrupted power supply.
“What has happened over the past few days is that some obligation owed by GNPC to WAPCo was an issue. WAPCo threatened [and] GNPC made some initial payments [but] it wasn’t satisfactory. We requested the Ministry of Finance to top up. We had to go through some approval processes.
“As of yesterday [Wednesday] evening the Ministry of Finance had approved a sum of 10 million to pay for a part of that debt. So that was the hiccup that we encountered that led to the power outages we encountered in the past few days. But that has been resolved.”
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