Petroleum Minister to face Parliament on Atuabo Gas, et al

By Edmund Smith-Asante, ACCRA

Emmanuel Armah-Kofi Buah, Petroleum Minister

The Government Assurances Committee of Parliament has summoned the Minister of Petroleum, Mr Emmanuel Armah-Kofi Buah, to answer questions on the extent of work done on the Atuabo Gas Processing Plant.


It is also to follow up on some promises made by the minister last year when he was also responsible for Energy.

After the meeting with the minister, scheduled between February 24 and 26, 2015, the committee will then prepare a report, with some recommendations, and present it to Parliament for a debate, its input and decisions on it.

Thereafter, the recommendations from Parliament will either be forwarded to the Speaker of Parliament or the President, as decided by the House.

In an interview with the Daily Graphic yesterday, the Chairman of the Government Assurances Committee, Mr Emmanuel Kwasi Bedzra, said last year the Energy Minister made a promise that the Atuabo Gas Processing Plant would be completed by August 2014 and also that the gas would be piped onto the thermal plant at Aboadze.

He said the committee had already visited the Aboadze plant site and noted that extensive work had been done.

However, it would like to know “whether all the legal issues concerning the tying in onto the national grid has been done. And if it has been done, what effect it has on our outage”.

Mr Bedzra, who is the MP for Ho West, stated that although it was the Energy Minister who made the promise, unfortunately he was no longer the Minister of Power.

“Regarding the issue of power outages, we will look at that later on with the Minister of Power,” he indicated.

Other ministers set to meet the Government Assurances Committee are those of Education, Roads and Highways, Health and Finance.

Sanctions

Mr Bedzra said Parliament’s Standing Orders gave the House the power to give recommendations to the President on the work of the Energy Minister, while the 1992 Constitution also allowed Parliament to censor a minister or even ask for his or her removal.

The Energy Minister had predicted that it was likely that his interventions and projects would end the power crisis by the first quarter of 2015.

However, gas supply from Nigeria, as envisaged to run the thermal plants in the country, has been anything but regular.

The breakdown of the equipment of some power plants has also contributed largely to the erratic power supply currently being experienced by the country.

Writer’s email: edmund.asante@graphic.com.gh

This story was first published by the Daily Graphic on February 5, 2015