Ghana’s energy sector, before the late 1990s, was a vertically integrated monopoly, which had the Volta River Authority (VRA), generating and transmitting electricity to every region of the country while also distributing to the Northern Sector through its subsidiary the Northern Electricity Department (NED).
The energy and renewable energy services sector in Ghana can be categorized into two subsectors; the power subsector and the petroleum subsector. The power subsector includes hydro generation, thermal generation, embedded generation and renewable energy generation (solar, wind, bio-mass and waste-to-energy and wave and tidal energy). On the other hand, the petroleum sub-sector includes oil and natural gas. Ghana’s petroleum sector involves upstream and downstream activities. Upstream activities include pre-licensing, licensing, exploration and appraisal, field development and production, disposal and decommissioning. The Petroleum Downstream subsector in Ghana is permanently predominantly characterized by the importation of crude oil and finished products, refining, storage, Transportation (road, rail, lake and ocean), marketing and sale of petroleum products.
Ghana exports power to Togo, Benin and Burkina Faso. Ongoing grid expansions would allow further exports to other neighbouring countries in the sub region. The thrust of Government policy in the energy sector and Ghana’s oil find in commercial quantities is to push for a significant increase in its energy resources to become a net exporter of both power and fuel.
With an overview of grid power supply in 2019, installed generation capacity available for grid power supply at the transmission level as at the end of 2019 was about 4,990 Megawatt with a dependable capacity of 4,580 Megawatt.
It totaled 5,171.6MW if primary embedded generation including the listed solar plants at the sub-transmission level are included.
This was about 4.2% expan- sion over last year’s compared to 13% increment from 2017 to 2018. The dependable capacity in this case is 4,738.6 Megawatt.
Renewable Energy installations increased from about 71.3 MWp in 2018 to about 78.6 MW in 2019 and total grid-tied Solar PV at the distribution level is 42.5 MW. Even though grid-tied Solar PV was almost 43 MW, significant embedded grid-connected solar power units totaling about 6.5 MW peak and largely owned by commercial customers of ECG are expected to come online in 2020. There is also a 500 MWp solar irrigation system expected to be completed this year. However, these are likely to have an impact on grid electricity consumption.
Looking at the Petroleum subsectors: Oil and Natural Gas, Ghana’s oil produc- tion in 2019 was about 72.1 million barrels coming from the three main commercial fields, Jubilee; 45%, Tweneboa, Enyera and Ntomme (TEN); 31% and Sankofa-Gye Nyame 24% compared to about 62.1 million barrels in 2018 representing an increase of about 14.97% over the previous year.
The total net gas production in 2019 was about 140,853.67 mmscf coming from the three main commercial fields, Jubilee, TEN and Sankofa-Gye Nyame compared to 91, 459 mmscf in 2018, representing an increase of about 54% over the previous year.
In an interview with Volkan Buyukbicer, Country Manager of Karpowership Ghana Company Limited, had this to say about the energy and renewable energy sector: “The region is very endowed with rich natural resources and has many emerging nations. As such there is an increased demand for energy to accelerate economic growth”.
Ghana launched her first oil and gas licensing round in 2018. This was in line with the country’s new Petroleum (Exploration and Production) Act (Act 919). The objective of Ghana’s first oil and gas licensing round was to “ensure trans- parency and fairness in the prudent and efficient management of petroleum resources and to enable the government of Ghana to accelerate upstream activities so as to increase reserves and the production of petroleum resources.”
The Ministry of Energy has worked closely with relevant stakeholders over the years to create an enabling legal and regulatory regime aimed at ensuring transparent, accountable and prudent management of Ghana’s petroleum resources. Critical Legislation in place include: the GNPC Law 1983(PNDCL64), Income Tax Act 2015 (Act 896), Petroleum Revenue Management Act, 2011 (Act 815) as amended, etc. The distribution of petroleum products in Ghana is dominated by multinational oil marketing companies.
Following the deregulation policy of the government, the oil marketing companies have increased in numbers to include several local Ghanaian companies. The products are retailed through gas stations which are either owned by the Oil Marketing Companies (OMCs) or private individuals. There are one hundred and thirty-eight (138) accredited oil marketing companies in good standing for business in Ghana. The private sector, including the OMCs and other source and supply, finished products through an open competitive tendering system.
