Barkindo said that the resumption of gas supply to the countries was because domestic gas supply had improved, hinting also that supply to Ghana was initially stopped to satisfy local demand.
The NNPC GMD, who was speaking to journalists on the sidelines of a meeting organised by the corporation titled, "Stakeholders' forum on gas to power: Achieving alignment for delivering gas to power in Nigeria," said, "Today, we have started supplying the West African Gas Pipeline, which we had to shut down in order to divert the gas for domestic utilisation."
He added that the reason for the resumption of supply was "Because power generation has started to go up."
The West African Gas Pipeline Company, the firm delivering Nigeria's gas to Ghana, had in a statement issued in November 2009, said, "WAPco, last April delivered its first natural gas supply to VRA's Takoradi Thermal Plant at Aboadze near Takoradi, under an interim gas supply arrangement.
"This initial supply enabled VRA to commission one of its 100 megawatts' turbines and generate power in Ghana from natural gas.
"Since May 2009, however, WAPCo has not received gas from N-Gas Limited for further delivery to VRA due to vandalism of gas supply pipelines in the Niger Delta region, several kilometres upstream of the WAGP connection to the Nigerian Gas Company's Escravos-Lagos Pipeline system."
Corroborating Barkindo's statement on increased power generation , the Executive Director, Operations, Power Holding Company of Nigeria, Mr. John Ayodele, who was also speaking on the sidelines of the conference in Lagos, said power generation was 3,558 megawatts on Monday morning and could climb to 3,700MW by Tuesday morning.
Also, Barkindo, had, in a presentation at the opening ceremony of the event, explained reasons why the oil industry could not achieve the 1.2 billion standard cubic feet of gas- domestic -gas- target agreed between it and government in 2008 and which government provided adequate funds for.in 2008 and 2009 budgets.
According to him, although the industry achieved 885 million standard cubic feet, it fell short of the target beacuse of the security situation in the Niger Delta, which was poor between 2008 and 2009 and operational challenges in the various oil producing companies.
Barkindo said, " The 1.2 billion scfd, domestic gas supply obligation was distributed among Joint Venture companies, including the NNPC and some of the Production Sharing Contracts' operators like Pan Ocean. In each of the companies, they had internal challenges. Now, this meeting that we convened will give us the opportunity to jointly review and address these challenges in order to come out with a joint programme of action, that is realistic, flexible and will enable us, not only to achieve the missed target but also to bring forward the projects which are being funded in the 2010 budget."
He stated that the outcome of the conference would be presented to Acting President Goodluck Jonathan
