Essay: The West African Gas Pipeline (WAGP)

The 678 kilometer West African Gas Pipeline (WAGP) has a link connecting into the existing Escravos-Lagos pipeline at the Nigeria gas company’s Itoki natural gas export terminal in Nigeria and continues to a beachhead in Lagos. From lagos it moves offshore to Takoradi, in Ghana, with natural gas delivery laterals from the 20 inch diameter mainline extending to Cotonou in Benin, Lome inTogo, and Tema in Ghana. The Escravos-Lagos gas pipeline system has a capacity of 800 MMscfd, the west African gas pipeline operated by west African gas pipeline company system will originally carry a required volume of 170MMscfd and peak over time at a capacity of 460MMscf. the main offshore pipeline runs from East to West at an average water depth of 35 meters though some sectors such as the south east of Ghana, south of Lome and the Benin. Nigerian frontier ranges between 50 to 70 meters (WAPCo, 2015)
Considerable delay in the construction of the pipeline resulted in the construction cost to increase more than the original budget amount. The supply of the natural gas by Nigeria has also been inconsistent and below the actual amount pledged. Political instabilities, pipeline vandalism and poor quality of natural gas supply from Nigeria cause a serious challenge to the natural gas transportation through WAGP. Ghana, Togo, Benin and other West African countries is looking forward for another alternative solution to meet its increasing energy demands for the future and also for the development of its own natural gas production (Subramanian & Benjamin, 2012)
There was a rapid increase interest in the pipeline owing to the severe energy decrease in Ghana, Benin and Togo from 1997-1998. There is technical and commercial possiblity of connecting the fields at Escravos, Nigeria with an offshore pipeline was conducted by many private oil companies. The construction of WAGP began in January 2005 and the first ”free flow” of natural gas supply through the pipeline arrived in Ghana in December 2008. Around 2009, Volta River Authority in Ghana started generating power using natural gas from WAGP (WAGPA, 2011)