Energy flow

Ghana is poised to become the West African regional hub for cheaper, cleaner power.

This comes after it took delivery of a floating regasification unit (FRU), the centrepiece in sub-Saharan Africa’s first liquefied natural gas (LNG)-to-power project.

Owned by Tema LNG Terminal Company, the FRU is expected to come on-stream this quarter to start supplying the region with 1.7 million tons of LNG a year for power generation.

The project will see the regasified LNG being piped through a new 6 km pipeline linking the terminal to existing infrastructure, to fuel power plants at the Tema energy and industrial hub.

‘Ghana can now start to service the rest of the region with fuel that is continuously growing in popularity because of the cost and the significant environmental benefits it provides,’ says Tema LNG Terminal project manager Edmund Agyeman-Duah. The US$350 million project took two years to build.

Bloomberg reports the processed LNG will be 30% to 35% cheaper than heavy fuel oil, and the plant produces about half the greenhouse gases than coal-fired energy plants. It is also expected that the LNG plant will reduce the region’s dependence on the West African Gas pipeline, which has sometimes proven to be unreliable.