Gov’t Eats Back Words, Extends Mahama’s Karpower 10 More Years. -Ghana Gas to commence supply of gas to Karpowership Tomorrow

Despite its strong opposition to the previous government administration’s contract with Turkish operated giant floating power plant -Karpower, the New Patriotic Party (NPP) administration has extended the contract by 10 more years to a total of 20 years, Whatsup News has gathered.

The then opposition NPP strongly kicked against the deal with the Turkish company when the erstwhile administration of John Dramani Mahama entered the multi-million dollar contract to augment Ghana’s power mix to stall the raging electricity crisis.

Accra-based Citi News is reporting that sources at the Energy Ministry have confirmed that the Karpower deal has been renegotiated and extended.

In December 2015, the then running-mate on the NPP ticket, Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia popularly said the Karpower deal “made no sense”.

According to Dr. Bawumia’s analysis, “A 225 megawatts plant like the Karpower Plant that we are renting, will cost some 225 million dollars if we wanted to purchase it; and we will own it. Under the Karpower deal, we will pay for the power from the barge for the next ten years whether we use it or not…After ten years, the barge will sail away and with this one billion dollar, we could have built a 1,000-megawatt plant for ourselves. Power from the barge will also cost at least twice what it cost to supply power from Takoradi. This really does not make sense.”

However, Karpower which was contracted around 2015 had hardly completed half of its contract term and yet, the former critics of the deal have slapped 10 more years to the lifespan of the contract.

This is the second major power plant that was contracted by the Mahama administration that received serious criticisms by the NPP but whose contract terms have been extended by the NPP as soon as they assumed the reins of power. The first such contract was the Ameri power plant from Qatar-based operators.

The government claims it had renegotiated the terms of the agreements to give value for money to Ghanaian taxpayers, however, the Ameri deal renegotiation was exposed as a worse deal than it was previously. The controversy around the renegotiation of the Ameri deal led to the firing of the then Minister of Energy, Boakye Agyarko, who threatened to “talk”.

Meanwhile, Karpower which has a generation capacity of 470 Megawatt (MW) has been consistently adjudged the best power plant in Ghana in a number of national and international 

The Ghana Gas Company is expected to commence the supply of gas from the Atuabo Gas Plant to the Karpowership floating vessel tomorrow.

The expectation is the result of a timeline that its Head of Corporate Affairs, Ernest Owusu Bempah, had given on Monday.

Consequently, Ghanaians are looking forward to seeing Atuabo transfer its first ever gas to the Karadeniz Powership Osman Khan on Wednesday.

It would be recalled that the floating vessel had been relocated to the Sekondi Naval Base from Tema in August.

Government had taken a decision to relocate the 470 megawatts vessel to enable it draw natural gas from Atuabo Gas Processing plant to power the powership.

Yesterday, the Ghana News Agency had quoted Owusu Bempah as saying that all the engineering works, electrical connections and pipeline networks needed to power the Karpowership was 98 percent complete.

Mr. Bempah is said to have announced that hydrogen was being pumped through the pipelines to flush them to clear the lines for the free flow of gas, adding that all things being equal, the powership would become operational by October 31.

According to the reports he explained that the eight-kilometer onshore and the 1.3 km offshore pipelines linking the Karpowership, the tie-in point, have all been successfully laid, with test on electrical connections and the metering gauge also fixed. Ernest Owusu Bempah was reported to have said Ghana Gas would be supplying the powership 60 to 90 minimum continuous stable flow (mcsf) gas on daily basis, adding that Ghana Gas has more than 350mcsf gas and would be able to meet the demands of the powership.