Ghana hit by power outages due to limited gas supply
ACCRA, Oct 27 (Reuters) - Several areas of Ghana were hit by power outages due to a drop in electricity generation on Thursday after the West African country's power transmission company warned of limited gas supply for power generation.
The Ghana Grid Company said in a statement that a 550 megawatt gap at peak time, around 10% of the country's installed generation capacity, would affect supply to consumers but did not provide any reasons for the shortage.
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Ghana Gas Chief Executive Officer Ben Asante told Reuters the issue was gas delivery and not the supply.
He said the outages happened because the West African Gas Pipeline Company's pipeline, which delivers about 100 million standard cubic feet per day of gas from Takoradi to Tema, has been taken out of service.
The West Africa Gas Pipeline Company said it will issue a statement later on Friday.
The West African cocoa, gold and oil producer has been grappling with its worst economic crisis in a generation, characterised by double-digit inflation and ballooning public debt.
In June, Ghana's independent power producers (IPPs) warned the government of potential power outages over the non-payment of arrears amid long-running debt talks, according to a letter seen by Reuters.
A month later, the IPPs reached an interim deal with the state-run Electricity Company of Ghana over arrears owed to them. However, they warned that if the debt issue remains unresolved they would shut down without any further notice. (Reporting by Maxwell Akalaare Adombila, Christian Akorlie and Bate Felix; Writing by Anait Miridzhanian; Editing by Sharon Singleton)