Let’s avoid oil disasters – Buah
Mr Emmanuel Armah-Kofi Buah, Deputy Minister of Energy, said government would ensure that Jubilee Field operators worked within approved rules and internationally accepted standards to prevent disasters.
He said the recent oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico and Ghana’s poor record in the mining industry were critical indicators that should encourage government to prevent such disasters.
Mr Buah said this when he paid a courtesy call on Mrs Christina Kobinah, Tarkwa-Nsuaem Municipal Chief Executive at Tarkwa on Friday.
He therefore appealed to the various oil companies to work hard and avoid any form of disaster through spills or fire.
He said though the gas processing facility at Bonyere was not ready, government would continue to remain committed to its ‘non flaring of gas” policy.
Mr. Buah said the gas and its allied products from the oil sector should inspire Ghanaians to develop strategies that could make more Ghanaians benefit from the sector.
He said issues about corruption must be dealt with while the oil resources must be used in critical sectors such as education, health and road infrastructure.
Mr Buah said the Oil and Gas Management Bill and Petroleum Bill before Parliament were all efforts by the government to ensure sanity, prevent corruption and secure the resources in the oil sector.
On electricity, he explained that every part of Ghana would be connected to the National Electricity Grid by 2020.
He said an Exim Bank loan of 350 million US dollars released to the government for rural electrification would facilitate the process and make extension of power to expanding communities easier.
Mr Buah said as part of the massive rural electrical exercise, 865 communities would benefit from the first phase of the project and by 2015, 85 percent of communities would be hooked to the national electricity grid.
He said a team has been dispatched to the United States of America to inspect equipments and plant that would form part of the loan package.
Mr Buah said when the equipments were approved, they would be shipped and the rural exercise would begin in earnest under the Ghana Energy Development Access Programme.
He decried the obsolete equipments presently being used by the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) which was making the stability almost impossible.
Mr Buah said ECG had already secured 400 million US dollars to begin rehabilitating its outmoded equipments and improve the electrical capacity and supply in the country.
Mrs Christina Kobinah appealed to the minister to assist the Tarkwa-Nsuaem Municipal Assembly to extend electricity to the Tarkwa District Hospital and the new Ghana Education Service Administrative block.
Source: GNA