ECOWAS experts discuss regulating energy resources

10/11/2010

Story: Musah Yahaya Jafaru
ENERGY experts from the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) member states are meeting in Accra to draw up an action plan to promote and manage the trade of electricity among member states.
The action plan would ensure an open commercialisation of electricity and give guidelines on the mode of generation, transmission and pricing of electricity.
The participating countries are Ghana, Togo, Benin, Nigeria, Cote d’Ivoire, Cape Verde, The Gambia, Guinea, Guinea Bissau, Liberia, Mali, Niger, Senegal and Sierra Leone.
The Minister of Energy, Dr Joe Oteng-Adjei, in a speech read on his behalf, noted that West Africa possessed huge but vastly untapped energy resources, particularly in some of the coastal member states.
He said if the energy resources were fully exploited, it could contribute significantly to pulling “our people together out of the pervasive poverty in the region”.
Ironically, Dr Oteng-Adjei said, in spite of the energy endowments, access to electricity remained “scandalously low” because of the lack of investment capital to develop the required infrastructure.
Dr Oteng-Adjei mentioned the signing of the ECOWAS Energy Protocol in 2003, the approval of the revised ECOWAS Generation and Transmission Action Plan in 2004, the establishment of the West African Gas Pipeline Authority and the creation of ERERA in 2008 as some of the achievements towards promoting electricity generation and supply among member countries.
The chairman of ERERA, Mr El Hadj Ibrahim Thiam, said regional regulation would help to improve governance through support for trade liberalisation and the promotion of respect for contracts and industry standards by all parties.
He said regional regulation also sought to increase confidence of market participants and facilitate private sector involvement.
Mr Thiam said ERERA sought to develop and monitor the implementation of uniform technical rules for the exchange management between interconnected systems in order to maximise their technical efficiency.
It was also to monitor wholesale sale of electricity to different purchasers from member states and analysis of their effectiveness in order to avoid anti-competitive practices.
Mr Thiam commended Ghana for her commitment