Monday, March 21, 2016

DUMSOR COMING BACK?

By William Yaw Owusu
Saturday, March 19, 2016
From all indications, the power crisis known in local parlance as dumsor that rocked the nation for close to four years might return in a couple of weeks.

This follows an announcement by Ghana Grid Company Limited (GRIDCo) – the body mandated to transmit electricity - that the Floating Production Storage and Offloading Vessel (FPSO) Kwame Nkrumah was shutting down for maintenance works.

The situation, according to GRIDCo, is going to affect power supply stability.

A news release issued yesterday and signed by William Amuna, Chief Executive of GRIDCo said the shutdown of the FPSO started yesterday, March 20 and was expected to last for “about two weeks.”

The release said gas flow from the Atuabo Gas Processing Plant to the Aboadze Thermal enclave had been curtailed and expected to commence upon the resumption of production from the FPSO.

According to the release, “gas flow from the West Africa Gas Pipeline Company (WAPCo) has suddenly reduced to only 6.0mmscf from the contracted volume of  120.0mmscf arising from vandalism on some pipelines in Nigeria.”

It said that engineers following the development had commenced the process of converting what they called “all dual fuel thermal plants to run on Light Crude Oil to resolve the challenge.”

The statement said “the conversion process which involves cleaning of fuel nozzles and other preparatory works is expected to take a few days to complete,” adding “during this period, the power supply system may experience some challenges, thereby affecting power supply stability.

GRIDCo assured the public that engineers were working around the clock to bring supply to normalcy.




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