The West Africa Gas Pipeline Company Limited has disclosed that the ongoing maintenance of its pipelines supplying gas from Lagos to Ghana, Togo, and Benin Republic would not affect power generation in these West African countries.

The General Manager of Corporate Affairs at WAPCo, Isaac Doku, disclosed this at the launch of the first pigging of the maintenance, which would last for one month at the Lagos Beach Compression Station in Badagry.

He stressed that WAPCo had met with the leadership of the countries on the need to carry out the maintenance and why they should source alternative sources of feedstock for their power plants, thereby erasing the possibility of an energy blackout among the gas-receiving countries.

“What we did was that we engaged the government of Ghana, we engaged the government of Togo, and the government of Benin Republic to let them know before the time that we were going to be doing the pigging and for efficient pigging, we need to close the laterals so that the gas can just push it in one direction, all the way to Takoradi.

“The various countries have made alternative arrangements among themselves to make sure that they got the liquid fuels that they can use for power generation,” he stated.

The PUNCH reported earlier that the gas supply to thermal plants in the three counties will be shut off for the maintenance period, which started on February 5 till March 2, 2025.

WAPCo’s General Manager Operations & Maintenance, Auwal Ibrahim, disclosed that these activities include the pigging and the in-line inspection of the 569-kilometre offshore pipeline infrastructure from Ajido, Lagos State, to Takoradi, Western Region, Ghana, and the replacement of critical subsea valves at Tema and Cotonou in Benin Republic to enhance operational safety.

“This maintenance project will necessitate the temporary suspension of specific services, including the reverse flow transportation of natural gas from Ghana’s Western Region to Tema in the east, as well as gas transportation services from Nigeria to Cotonou (Benin), Lomé (Togo), and Tema (Ghana).

“However, some gas transportation services from Nigeria to Takoradi in Ghana will continue during this period to ensure the successful execution of the pipeline cleaning and inspection activities,” the company said.

While highlighting the process of maintenance in Badagry, Doku noted that the pilot testing has been done with the use of a foam pig.

He stressed that the major maintenance would focus on the inner part of the pipeline through the onshore pigging and assessment of the external parts of the pipeline through the undersea assessment.

He continued, “When the pipeline was constructed, all the Tees that actually go to these three cities have got valves on them and the valves are such that it allows us to do what we are doing onshore, beneath the ocean.

“The valve allows us to be isolated to launch pigs, again, to clean the line from under the ocean to our station. Two years ago, we tried to clean those laterals, and in doing that, we realised that the valve in Cotonou and Tema were not completely gas-tight.

“So because we are closing the laterals, we thought this would be the time also to use that same window to change the valve. In addition to the cleaning and the inspection, we are changing two subsea valves, one at Cotonou and one at Tema.

“Once we do that, I think that then we can at least safely say that as far as we are concerned, we know that we are happy with the integrity of the whole pipeline.”

He concluded by urging partner countries to pay up their debt regularly to ensure efficient gas supply.

“We have to emphasise to the stakeholders that they should pay up so that we can maintain the pipeline and keep flowing the gas for them because if it goes down, we all know the effect; even this shut down, we know how the impact is and all the governments pushing that we should not.

“Eventually, they got the message that safety is paramount and it has to be done,” he added.


https://punchng.com/ghana-togo-not-affected-by-pipeline-maintenance-wapco/