Ghana goes dark (?) (Nationwide Power Disruption)

Have you ever heard of the phrase “Ghanaian Engineers can do nothing?” Lol. This is a phrase born out of deep ignorance. I often hear some Ghanaians pass many an unfortunate comment, which attests to the fact that, a portion of our population are deeply ignorant, including some who purport to be educated.
But that is not the focus of our discussion today.
About three days ago, the Ministry of Energy and Green Transition announced a Strategic Natural Gas Supply Enhancement through a press release which communicated an upcoming increase in natural gas supply by Eni a prominent player in the Energy Industry. This would lead to some 30 million standard cubic feet per day (MMscfd) addition to the current volume of gas, resulting in a ~ 270 MMscfd total.

Effects of the Enhancement
It was communicated that there is going to be temporal power outages in certain locations in the country. This is because there would be a cessation of gas supply to thermal plants which transform gas to electricity and which go through transmission lines to be supplied to end users. Does it sound like much? Let’s break it down below to understand how all this is engineered, and how in the present case, Ghana will go up with their gas output to 270 MMscfd.

What happens during this Upgrade?
Let us not go too far to the analytical processes to prove that there are commercial quantities of the gas resource. Those details might bore you.
What happens on July 13th 2025?

• The original physical structures in place for exporting the gas to the midstream (or what is known as the Receiving Facility) basically allows the source of gas known as Non Associated gas (NAG) to be piped for export
• To add the additional 30 million, it will be expedient to add another source of gas which is known as the Associated gas (AG) to the Non associated gas (NAG) stream
• For this to be done, there is the need to do a modification of the existing process piping architecture
• The modification has been done, but now, the original gas source (NAG), has to be shut or shut-in (or stop the flow), to allow for the tie-in of the new modification for the (AG) into the original NAG export piping so that both can travel to the Receiving Facility. (Is this clear?)
• The entire modification needs to run electrical cables, instrumentation cables and with software requiring a software modification to run
• By doing this effectively, instead of just one gas source; (the NAG), we get to add the (AG) and having both increases our gas throughput or gas production output. Which translates to the reality that, we can have an increased gas production to be sent downstream for distribution.

Where do Engineers come in>>> ?
The truth of the matter is that, Engineers are in it at every single phase! Let’s focus on the bullets above which we started with:

• Subsea Engineers are responsible for controlling the amount of flow of the gas through specialised equipment to send them to what is known as the Topsides for production processing to begin
• There are Process Engineers or what is commonly called Production Engineers in charge of the entire processing. They are making sure that the gas resource is being handled at optimal temperatures and pressures and that we do not experience any (for want of a better word) explosions (If you didn’t realize it, it’s gas we are talking about here and by gas, I mean Natural gas.)
• Categories of Process Engineers exist; including CCR Production Operators, Plant Production Field Operators, and Chemical Specialists.
• The modification and tie-in is done by Mechanical and Structural Engineers who know what levers to use, how long a column must be, what bolts can take what stresses and so on. Shout out to my Mechanical Engineers
• Electrical and instrumentation cables and software requires the inclusion of Electrical and Instrumentation Engineers as well as Software and DCS Engineers to see to software debugging and installations
• After the mechanical tie-in, the Production and Process Engineers come in again to open the wells or put them online for the production processing to begin again.
• Be careful not to look at these Engineers in a narrow sense because there are a host of other Engineers, Health and Safety Engineers, Technicians, Project Leaders, Project Coordinators and Project Managers manning these seemingly simple but actually complicated processes! Remember that the devil is always in the details!

What is the effect of this current July 13th Modification on the Consumer or End User ?
The Minister of Energy and Green Transition Mr. John Abdulai Jinapor has already stated that, there could be potential power cuts to parts of the Nation. Let’s hope that you do not fall into the category of locations which will suffer from a power cut or Dumsor. But we have been assured that it is only going to be for today? So fingers crossed, let’s pray that everything goes as planned so that we suffer a little now, for maximum benefit, and an increased power stability tomorrow.

What happens after downstream distribution of the gas?
Leave a comment if you would like to know what happens after downstream distribution of the gas? Then, I will do a separate article on that.

Miscellaneous
It’s been reported on certain social media handles that no power outages have yet been experienced, therefore some lawyer is calling the predicted power outages by Ghanaian Engineers a mere showoff and an actual bluff. If this lawyer knew more, he’d know that Engineers are not ones to bluff. We DO.

Written by Mena Ekua Feneba

(aka Josephine A. Appiah)