Jinapor warns of looming power outages over fuel shortage, but Krapa dismisses claims

John Jinapor, Member of Parliament for Yapei Kusawgu and former Deputy Energy Minister, has raised alarm over Ghana’s dwindling fuel reserves, cautioning that the country may face power outages in the coming days.

Speaking to JoyNews on January 7, 2024, following the inauguration of President John Dramani Mahama, Jinapor revealed that Ghana’s fuel stock could run out within two days if immediate measures are not taken.

“I have bad news for you: the confirmation we are getting is that we have only five hours of fuel stock. If you look at heavy fuel oil and diesel fuel, we don’t have up to two days, and so in two days’ time, we are likely to run out of fuel,” Jinapor stated during the interview.

The Yapei Kusawgu legislator, who serves on the transition team for energy and natural resources, further emphasised the gravity of the situation, adding that the previous administration had not made any fuel orders.

“This administration has not ordered any fuel as we speak, and it takes on average four weeks for the fuel to arrive and four weeks for the fuel to be treated, and so we are in a very serious situation,” he noted.

Jinapor indicated that following President Mahama’s assumption of office, checks during the transition process confirmed that Ghana’s current fuel reserves were insufficient to sustain the country’s power needs beyond two days.

However, his remarks have been met with a sharp rebuttal from the immediate past Minister of Energy, Herbert Krapa. In a Facebook post, Krapa refuted Jinapor’s claims, insisting that the Akufo-Addo administration left ample fuel reserves to ensure stable power generation.

“I have read a statement from Hon. John Jinapor (MP), Co-Chairman of the Transition Team sub-committee on Energy and Natural Resources, in which he claims that ‘massive load shedding looms as Ghana’s fuel stock depletes’ and seeks to blame His Excellency President Akufo-Addo and his government for it,” Krapa wrote.

“Mr. Jinapor is wrong. Load shedding does not ‘loom.’ It is caused either by technical or emergency power generation issues or a lack of competence in managing the power sector. Mr. Jinapor seems to be haunted clearly by the latter,” he added.

Krapa explained that by the time the Akufo-Addo administration exited office, light crude oil stocks were available and being used by Cenpower, while AKSA continued to receive heavy fuel oil supplies.

He urged the new government to focus on procuring additional fuel and ensuring effective power sector management.

“This fact is easily verifiable with a phone call to both power plants. The responsibility of the new administration is to not only procure more liquid fuel to keep the lights on whenever liquid fuel becomes required to complement gas supply but also plan competently to avert power supply disruptions. We did it, and they can do it too, if they can,” Krapa remarked.

He further called on the new government to focus on governing and avoid unnecessary blame games.

“The NDC government should get to work as we did, the reason we kept the lights on for eight years, regardless of the difficult times, and stop the needless finger-pointing. That is not the way we kept the lights on,” Krapa stated.

In a related development, parts of the country, including Bortianor, Adentan, and Ejisu, experienced power outages on Tuesday night, which continued into Wednesday.