pThe Ghana National Gas Company (GNGC) has given assurance that it will safeguard the integrity of its processing plant to ensure it is able to deliver on its mandate of providing sustainable gas processing to power the industrialisation of the country.
According to the Assistant Manager, Plant Utilities of the company, Mr. Michael Kwabena Mireku the safety and security of the gas processing plant were key in ensuring a buoyant power generating system with the capacity to drive the economy.
“We are committed to ensuring that the plant runs as efficiently and prudently as possible so that we can save foreign reserve by reducing the amount of light crude oil (LCO) we need to power plants around the country,” he emphasised.
Mr. Mireku who was addressing a news conference here last week Wednesday also assured that the GNGC would work to ensure increased production of Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG) and expand the market in the country.
“We will continue to ensure that we increase production of LPG and create a greater market for the industry. We are also committed to reduce the foreign exchange we need to buy LPG elsewhere,” he explained.
He noted that the Atuabo plant was designed to use 160 million standard cubic feet of gas per day (mmscfd), however, it was now using 120 million mmscfd of raw gas from the Jubilee field to produce lean gas, LPG and condensates for the Ghanaian market.
Mr. Mireku indicated that the indigenisation of the plant engineers and other staff at all levels was one key achievement chalked by the company stressing that “we see it as very unique and important, and we are proud of this and Ghanaians should also be proud”.
He pointed out that management was desirous and committed to ensuring that the safety environment-both offshore and onshore were efficiently secured, stressing that “it’s important because it’s about sustainability”.
On his part the Director of Communications at GNGC, Ernest Owusu-Bempah said the company chalked lots of successes in terms of its health, safety, security and environment policy direction.
He noted that in line with efficient operations the plant achieved an incident free operations with zero loss time injury and also successfully implemented the Risk Based Process Safety Management to improve the overall safety system of the Atuabo installations.
Mr. Owusu-Bempah said apart from this there was successful control of site-specific hazards through monthly site inspections on fire safety, fixed and mobile platforms, as preventive actions.
“We also achieved the improved occupational health through the execution of annual medical surveillance for operational staff and the standardisation of Personal Protection Equipment (PPEs) to ensure that all employees who may be exposed to specific hazards or risks are adequately provided with suitable equipment,” he reiterated.
FROM CLEMENT ADZEI BOYE, TAKORADI