The Ghana Gas Senior Staff Association is rejecting a report from the Parliament’s Committee on Mines and Energy on a gas supply agreement between Ghana National Petroleum Corporation (GNPC) and Genser Energy Ghana Limited.
The deal involves the provision of 50 million standard cubic feet of raw gas daily to Genser Energy.
The Chairman of Ghana Gas Senior Staff Association, Richmond Alamu is concerned that the deal’s conditions could negatively impact consumers and potentially lead to some losses for Ghana.
“The nation – Ghana, we all need to be very careful of the dire consequences of the decisions that are made today. There are a lot of things that we want improvement on and we cannot allow our birthright as primary actors to be going to a foreign land.
“So the initial agreement was for them to come and assist and they abrogated the contract … so we need to make sure that nobody throws dust into anybody’s eyes by stating that we even went into agreement from the onset,” he said.
However, the Parliamentary Select Committee on Mines and Energy has investigated claims of irregularities by the African Centre for Energy Policy and the IMANI Center for Policy and Education and found no evidence of losses in the deal.
Details of the Parliamentary Committee indicate that the country stands to benefit from the deal in terms of job creation, and energy sector security.
The report added that the country will make “savings to the tune of US$1.462 billion as GNPC will lose USS 1.462 billion if GEGL moved to WAC0G Net Back.”
Also, there will be a reduction in transmission losses by $480 million once the Ameri plant is relocated to Kumasi and made operational.
In conclusion, the Committee stressed that there is sufficient gas in the background, hence, Ghana Gas and Genser can operate and run convenient Gas Transmission Plants to power the economy.
But the Association called on stakeholders as well as agencies responsible to relook at the Genser deal again.
This, Ghana Gas noted will come along with dire consequences which the company will have to deal with from the decision the Committee is trying to enforce.
“IMANI, Bright Simons, Ghana Gas and all other agencies crying for the Genser deal to be looked at entirely are not crying for crying or attention sake because there are dire consequences for the country.”
The Ranking Member on Parliament’s Mines and Energy Committee, John Abdulai Jinapor, has disassociated himself from the contents of the Genser Energy and Ghana National Petroleum Corporation (GNPC) Sales Agreement Report.
He insists the report does not accurately reflect his views and that of the entire Minority in Parliament.
In a statement issued on Thursday, August 17, he urged the public to disregard the report.
“For the avoidance of doubt, I wish to categorically disassociate myself from the content and intents of the said report as it does not accurately reflect my position and that of the Minority in its entirety.”
Firstly, it is true that I have consistently maintained that the GSA is not fairly priced and will result in significant losses to the state. It cannot, therefore, be the case that I disagreed with the position of ACEP/IMANI that the GSA in its current form will result in huge losses to the state.”
“More importantly, it is inaccurate to report that the entire membership of the committee disagreed with my position.”