In June of last year, the Aboadze Thermal Plant shut down operations following a gas explosion. According to Graphic online, one of the plant’s four main units failed halting contribution of about 132MW to the national grid.

Now, Emmanuel Armah Kofi Buah, Ghana’s Minister for Energy and Petroleum says that the Aboadze plant will not receive gas to begin generation until the end of 2014.

Although China-based petroleum company Sinopec released a statement assuring the delivery of gas by April of this year, pipeline and plant initiatives must be completed before the plant can put the gas to use, a Business & Financial Times report disclosed.

“As we speak, there are three critical milestones we are looking at: the gas project, as you know, involves a 65-kilometre pipeline, a gas processing plant and a 110-kilometre pipeline from Atuabo to Aboadze…As the sector minister, what I am interested in is when gas will actually flow,” Buah, said in the report.

“When will meaningful numbers flow to power our thermal plants?…My understanding is that for us to get over 100 million standard cubic feet of gas for the thermal plant in Aboadze, it is not going to be within this period but close to the last quarter of the year,” he said.

As outlined by Business & Financial Times, the three benchmarks that must be met involve mechanical completion, pre-commissioning and commissioning.