Kwadwo Poku, the Executive Director of the Institute for Energy Policies and Research (INSTEPR), has criticized the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the Ghana National Petroleum Corporation (GNPC) and called for his dismissal by the president due to his alleged inaction in preventing recent power outages.
Poku's remarks come in the wake of power outages in parts of the country, reminiscent of the “Dumsor” crisis in 2015.
He accused the GNPC CEO of neglecting the warnings from the West Africa Gas Pipeline Company Limited (WAGPCo) about potential pipeline shutdowns due to unsettled debts.
In an interview on The Big Issue on Citi TV, Poku stated, “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.”
He further criticized GNPC, saying, “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.”
Deputy Energy Minister Andrew Egyapa Mercer has assured the public that the challenges leading to recent power outages have been resolved. In an interview, he mentioned the disbursement of $10 million to WAPCo for gas supply, reinforcing the commitment to uninterrupted power supply.
Mercer stated, “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.”