By Laudia Sawer
Tema, Feb. 21, GNA — Ms. Michelle Burkett, the Managing Director of the West African Gas Pipeline Company Limited (WAPCo), has announced that the company will conduct an expansion visibility study this year.
Ms. Burkett said, “We are open and willing to expand the facility as the volumes grow from the east. I am open to the volumes growing from the west as well, so I do think WAPCo will be in an exceptionally advantageous position to support the energy needs from a transportation perspective of gas from Nigeria and from the western region of Ghana.”
Speaking with the media during a tour of WAPCo’s Regulating and Metering Station in Tema, he said the visibility study was in the plans of the company this year to assess debottlenecking the facility.
Mr. Benoni Owusu Ayeh, the Operations and Maintenance Superintendent West, WAPCo, indicated that the company has a compressor station at LBCS with a capacity of 155 million standard cubic feet of gas per day (MMSCFD), which needs to be expanded.
“We also have heaps in Tema here; that heap also we have to look at how we can mitigate that limit, that pressure to make sure that the line is free so that we can bring in more gas,” he added.
He further explained that the study would help the company to see how it could first face, optimise, and make sure that it is making use of the current capacity before thinking about any other physical investment to increase the capacity.
Dr. Isaac Adjei Doku, the General Manager, Corporate Affairs of WAPCo, breaking down the issue, said, “When he talks about heaps, the gas comes at a certain pressure, and so to protect this facility, we got the heaps, which make sure that the gas that is coming in does not exceed 54 when it enters this facility.”
Dr. Doku further explained, “The exploratory thing that we are going to do is to see how we will remove the heaps so that we can have gas coming in at a pressure higher than the current 54, at the same time making sure that every facility and every human being is safe.”
He added that “the main pipeline carries up to 474, so the capacity is there. The compression that we have now is 155, and we are only doing about 80.”
GNA