Franklyn Cudjoe
Contrary to assertions by the Ghana National Gas Company Limited somewhere last year that the initial phase of the $750 million Atuabo Gas Processing Plant Project was about 80 percent complete, IMANI Ghana has indicated otherwise.
The policy think-tank, which toured the facility recently, said the project was 33 percent complete.
The plant, situated in the Ellembele District of the Western Region, is being constructed by SINOPEC, a Chinese engineering company, for the Ghana Gas company.
In its assessment, IMANI notes: “At the current rate of completion, we believe the project will be ready to deliver gas for power production in Ghana sometime in early 2014. The project may still be fast-tracked for completion by end of 2013 if the flow of funds were to be assured for any such acceleration. However, there is a hard limitation on the ability of Ghana Gas to accelerate ongoing project execution since the gas processing modules themselves are currently being built by a Canadian company.”
“From our investigations, the modular plant requires 20 months of fabrication and engineering, which makes it unlikely, despite recent reports, that it can be completed and shipped before the third quarter of this year. Though we understand from the engineers that no compressor system is required, the following modules are relevant to any functioning gas processing system of the Atuabo kind: the processing unit proper in the initial station, where natural gas liquids is removed from the raw gas; the amine theatre, where certain contaminants are removed; the anti-freeze treatment unit; the sieve dehydrators to remove moisture; flaring equipment; de-sulfurisers; liquid separators to fraction off natural gas liquids; and quality testing units for chromatographic and other assurance processes.
IMANI commented that “all these units are being built in Canada for shipping to Ghana in the near future. Before these modules arrive in the country for integration, the site should be ready for them.”
It also indicated that utility and auxiliary units need to be in place. These include everything from car parks, staff quarters, firefighting installations, boreholes, reverse osmosis equipment to treat water, power plants, connections to the main grid, communication systems (a fibre-optic line is being laid alongside the online gas pipeline), LPG tanks, security systems, completion of outstanding earthworks and sub-structural elements. Also, there is need for cooling equipment for the storage decks, and the frontend engineering for the landfalls which is the point where the gas from Jubilee shall be fed into the processing plant in Atuabo.
According to IMANI, “With the exception of the earthworks and foundational/sub-structural developments, the other components of the site preparation to receive the gas processing modules are outstanding.”
Noting that the open-plan office style complemented the barrack-style outdoor layout to create a Spartan feel to the nerve-center of the project field operations in Atuabo, the centre said Ghana needs to think through how the gas plant and supporting infrastructure are going to be operated.
“Will a Ghanaian workforce be mainly responsible for the technical operation and maintenance or will that be outsourced to a foreign company? With the project yet to ramp up staffing, now is the time to strategise carefully. Observations of all parts of the project combined together, and notwithstanding the valiant work Ghana Gas and its contractors have done on the pipeline system, leads us to conclude that 66 percent of the work remains outstanding, with the most realistic timeline for delivery of gas to Aboadze being early 2014.
“We have asked for more information from Ghana Gas for the validation or modification of this initial assessment. One curious area of confusion in determining the state of project execution, however, is whether remote monitoring of the pipeline is planned.”
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