FULWOOD Mike & Thierry Bros

With energy demand in Africa forecast to grow quickly in the coming decades, the prospects of LNG imports have been talked up by many commentators, with Ghana being thought of as one of the brightest prospects. Ghana first began developing its gas market by importing pipeline gas from Nigeria, along the West African Gas Pipeline, at the end of 2008, to replace the burning of expensive light crude oil in power plants.  At the same time, Ghana began to develop its own gas reserves, with the start-up of associated gas from the Tullow-operated Jubilee field in 2014, followed by the TEN field in 2016.  In 2018 the start-up of the Sankofa field will add significantly to the level of domestic production. However, there appears to be no room in the market for LNG until after 2020 at the earliest.  If the LNG glut that so many are expecting does not materialise then Ghana, like Ivory Coast, may have missed the boat in terms of accessing cheap LNG via FSRU. African gas demand growth should be centred on using locally domestic resources. This will not help to foster FIDs for African LNG projects as they won’t get any regional customers and would therefore have to compete in the other regional markets (Asia, Europe and Latin America).

https://www.oxfordenergy.org/publications/future-prospects-lng-demand-ghana/