Chinese Bank Clears Funds for Ghana Gas Project

The Ghanaian government, through the Chinese Development Bank (CDB), paid $188 million to Sinopec for continuation of work on the Ghana Gas Infrastructure Development project at Atuabo in the Western Region, Ghana’s Daily Graphic newspaper reported.

The payment of the tranche by the CDB on behalf of the Ghana National Gas Company (GNGC) last Wednesday has led to the resumption of work on the project which stalled some two months ago, the newspaper said.

The Chief Executive Officer of the GNGC, Sipa Yankey, said the GNGC had processed another disbursement invoice for $120 million which had been forwarded to the CDB through Ghana’s ministry of Finance and Economic Planning, to make up for the total amount it owed the contractors.

“Although we have lost two months of activity, which could impact negatively on the commissioning schedule, we are working very hard to meet the stipulated deadline of completion,” Daily Graphic quoted the CEO.

Presently, there are over five trillion standard cubic feet of natural gas deposit offshore and the first phase of the plant has been designed to process 150 million standard cubic feet of gas per stream day. The second phase, which is expected to come on stream in 2016-17, would be expected to increase production to about 300 million cubic feet per stream day.