IMANI Ghana Gas Initial Report 2013 April

8/10/2019 IMANI Ghana Gas Initial Report 2013 April

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1 | I M A N I G h a n a I n i t i a l R e p o r t o n G h a n a G a s C o r r i d o r P r o j e c t

Ghana Gas Project is 33% CompleteIMANI Report

We were pleasantly surprised when the Ghana Gas Company responded to our request to tour the

ongoing early phase gas infrastructure project (EPGIP) with immediate enthusiasm. We are not used

to that from government agencies, and certainly not from agencies involved in the energy sector.

GNPC, for instance, is shadowy and arrogant, and aloof and unresponsive to any sense of public

accountability or transparency.

Not so Ghana Gas, as we discovered to our appreciation.

The company promptly agreed to send a number of its personnel to meet us at the Takoradi airport

and conduct us around key components of the project. Joining IMANI was the public interest

researcher and local content [in the energy sector] specialist, Kwame Jantuah.

(Full disclaimer: he paid for his own air travel, just like IMANIs research team.)

Starting at about 8:00am, approximately half an hour after we arrived in Takoradi, the tour ended at

3:30pm, permitting a good 7 hours of site visits, briefings and evidence gathering.

Because we arrived in the Takoradi area from Accra, the tour was conducted back to front, with the

IMANI team beginning at the destination of the processed gas, the Aboadze-based Takoradi Thermal

Processing Plant (TTPP) and ending at the landing point in Atuabo where the offshore pipeline

bringing the raw gas from the Jubilee fields connects with the onshore pipeline that will carry the gas

first to the processing plant a few meters off the coast, and then to the power plant at Aboadze.

Fig 1. A back entrance to the Takoradi Thermal Power Station, which is the first port of call for

processed gas from Atuabo once the plant, auxiliaries, and pipelines are complete.

We found our guides, drawn from the government relations, community relations, and engineering

teams at Ghana Gas, confident in their mission and ready to show off the results of the intense

efforts their contractors have been putting in for several months now to integrate the various

components of the fairly challenging project.


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While we did not interact with any Chinese engineers from Sinopec, who are actually responsible for

the day to day execution of the project, except for a few minutes of pleasantries, we believe the tour

still offered a solid first-hand account of the project that can be built upon in subsequent reports.

We have already sent Ghana Gas a detailed questionnaire in order to obtain additional clarifications

of certain issues that we remain unclear about, and which may affect future conclusions.

In this initial report we make what we believe will become an interesting point of debate: that the

overall project is 33% complete if the end point is safe commercial delivery of processed gas from

Atuabo to the power-plant in Aboadze, and transport of LPG from the same site to Domunli for

onward evacuation to Accra by sea vessels.

At the current rate of completion we believe the project will be ready to deliver gas for power

production in Ghana sometime in early 2014. The project may still be fast-tracked for completion by

end of 2013 if the flow of funds were to be assured for any such acceleration. However, there is a

hard limitation on the ability of Ghana Gas to accelerate ongoing project execution: the gas

processing modules themselves, currently being built by a Canadian company.

The gas processing modules are being built to specifications and shall on completion be shipped to

the Gas Processing Plant site in Atuabo to be installed before going through a range of pre-

commissioning and commission activities. During these activities the various modules will be

connected together so that they can work as an integrated whole. From our investigations, the

modular plant requires 20 months of fabrication and engineering, which makes it unlikely, despite

recent reports, that it can be completed and shipped before the third quarter of this year.

Though we understand from the engineers that no compressor system is required, the following

modules are relevant to any functioning gas processing system of the Atuabo kind: the processingunit proper in the initial station, where natural gas liquids is removed from the raw gas; the amine

theatre, where certain contaminants are removed; the anti-freeze treatment unit; the sieve

dehydrators to remove moisture; flaring equipment; desulfurisers; liquid separators to fraction off

natural gas liquids; and quality testing units for chromatographic and other assurance processes. All

these units are being built in Canada for shipping to Ghana in the near future.

Before these modules arrive in the country for integration, the site should be ready for them. Utility

and auxiliary units need to be in place. These include everything from car parks, staff quarters, fire-

fighting installations, boreholes, reverse osmosis equipment to treat water, powerplants,

connections to the main grid, communication systems (a fibre-optic line is being laid alongside theonline gas pipeline), LPG tanks, security systems, completion of outstanding earthworks and sub-

structural elements, cooling equipment for the storage decks, and the frontend engineering for the

landfalls which is the point where the gas from Jubilee shall be fed into the processing plant in

Atuabo.

With the exception of the earthworks and foundational/sub-structural developments, the other

components of the site preparation to receive the gas processing modules are outstanding.


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Fig 2. A substantial amount of work remains to be done to complete the earthworks and sub-

structural work, finish the utilities, and prepare the Atuabo site to receive the modular units from

Canada for the initial station, and erect the auxiliary buildings.

Perhaps in recognition that the completion of the modular plant and its shipping from Canada

represents a hard limitation on the speed with which the on-site activities in Atuabo can be

accelerated, Sinopec has currently not ramped up manpower on the sites.

Fig 3. Artists Impression of Gas Processing Plant of the EPGIP when completed.

In addition to the Gas Processing Plant site, work has started on the other components of the early

Phase Gas Infrastructure Project (EPGIP).

As part of the EPGIP, Sinopec is putting up a metering and regulating station in Inchaban, Takoradi

near the Aboadze power station. In simple terms, this facility shall measure and regulate the flow of

the processed gas coming from the Atuabo plant before it is fed into the power plant. At the site of

the metering station, early stage earthworks can be seen.


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Fig 4. The existing metering and regulating station at Aboadzewhich conducts the flow of gas from

the West Africa Gas Pipeline (left picture), and the greenfield site of the Inchaban Metering and

regulating station, which when complete will regulate gas flow from Atuabo to Aboadze (right).

Also in the early stages of construction are two block valve stations at Anagyi and Kwekutsiakrom

that the IMANI team was unable to inspect, but which it was told are at the same stage of early

earthworks development as the Inchaban metering station.

The critical Esiama Distribution Station; the Domunli LPG gas tank farm, 20km from Atuabo, which

shall be fed by another 20-inch pipeline with LPG isolated from the gas treated at the Atuabo plant;

and the Amansuri basin LPG take-off points, are some of the other major outstanding components of

the EPGIP that are at the very initial stages of construction.

Of all the components of the project, it is the pipeline system that most justifies the confidence ofthe engineers we spoke to at Ghana Gas. We could of course not tour the offshore part of the

system, but we saw the landfall point where the concrete-coated offshore section has been

integrated with the epoxy-coated onshore steel pipe.

Fig. 5. The pipeline system is the part of the project that has most advanced. The picture on the left

shows the complex horizontal drilling feat on the bank of the Ankobra river. But as can be seen in the

picture on the right, there are still extended sections of the pipeline to be buried.


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The onshore pipeline measuring about 111 kilometers from Atuabo through Pumpuni to Aboadze is

about 65% to 70% complete, and accounts for the bulk of project work completed to date. The

engineers literally beamed with pride when they showed us a site on the banks of the Ankobra

where to bypass the river, horizontal directional drilling, similar to techniques used in deepwater oil

drilling, was employed to transport the pipeline underneath the riverbed, thus limiting the ecological

impact. The steel pipes were shipped into Ghana in short sections that are being welded together to

form longer sections in trenches along the corridor.

We noticed that in several sections the pipes were yet to be buried, though in some cases the

trenches have already been dug. Some work also remains to be done to test the welded joints of the

steel pipes and apply the approved coating. More cathodic protection units and ventilation pipes are

required at various points to measure corrosion of the buried pipelines over time and evacuate any

gas buildup.

When the pipeline system has been completed and the modular plant from Canada has been

installed and configured, a few months of pre-commissioning and commissioning work is necessary

to prepare for test transmission before full commercial commencement.

Fig 6. A few hundreds of meters from the gas processing plant site, the concrete-coated shallow-

water section of the offshore pipeline that will bring the raw gas from the FPSO has been landed and

is being integrated with the onshore pipeline that will carry this gas to the Atuabo initial station for

processing and then onward transport to the Aboadze thermal plant. Note its smaller size in

comparison with the onshore pipeline.


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A workforce strategy is required to ensure that when the engineers brought in by the vendors,

whose equipment shall be installed in the different components of the project, leave, following

successful commissioning of the equipment, the project does not become wholly dependent on the

EPC contractor, Sinopec, whose mandate, strictly speaking ends after the commissioning. If the plan

is to outsource the technical and operational management of the plant to another or the same

company, the preparatory work, including the complex legal, financial negotiation, regulatory and

political work needs to begin now since that could become another source of delay.

Fig 7. The open-plan office style complements the barrack-style outdoor layout to create a Spartan

feel to the nerve-center of the project field operations in Atuabo. Ghana needs to think through how

the gas plant and supporting infrastructure are going to be operated. Will a Ghanaian workforce be

mainly responsible for the technical operation and maintenance or will that be outsourced to a

foreign company? With the project yet to ramp up staffing, now is the time to strategise carefully.

Observations of all parts of the project combined together, and notwithstanding the valiant work

Ghana Gas and its contractors have done on the pipeline system, leads us to conclude that 66% of

the work remains outstanding, with the most realistic timeline for delivery of gas to Aboadze being

early 2014. We have asked for more information from Ghana Gas for the validation or modification

of this initial assessment.

One curious area of confusion in determining the state of project execution, however, is whether

remote monitoring of the pipeline is planned.

The engineers are confident that this is not necessary since the pipeline is not as lengthy as those

found in some parts of the world. Though we noticed that fibre-optic lines have been laid along the

pipeline, which itself utilises the GRIDCO right-of-way for about 85% of its path through Western

Region, the engineers maintained that this is solely for communication purposes, and will not be

used for strain gauge and other sensor-based measurements of the health of the pipeline, as is done

elsewhere. The absence of continued remote monitoring might delay efforts to investigate and

mitigate a suspected leakage.

Another area of interest is pressure management. The engineers were of the opinion that the length

of the pipeline and the quantity of gas being transported suggest minimal pressure challenges.


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Documents

IMANI Ghana Gas Initial Report 2013 April