- The small west African country of Togo has been plagued by extended power outages since the beginning of the year, worsening in early May, with some capital areas experiencing all-day blackouts.
- Facing growing discontent, the national electricity company CEET attributed the outages to “difficulties in the supply of natural gas at the national level, leading to restrictions from our external suppliers.”
- Nigeria is Togo’s main external supplier of gas.
“The energy crisis that has been ongoing since January 2024 in our region, mainly due to a natural gas supply shortage, is causing power cuts and disrupting our economies,” said Mila Aziable, Togo’s Minister of Energy in an X feed.
“The demand for natural gas in Togo is 35,000 MM BTU per day, but supplies are insufficient, sometimes nonexistent, resulting in high production costs and frequent outages,” she explained following a meeting in Lomé of the West African Gas Pipeline Ministerial Committee (WAGPCo). The crisis takes place in a period of peak temperatures, and it affects Togo and neighbours such as Benin and Ghana.
Situation worsening
Nigeria, facing its own load shedding issues, has limited electricity supplies to Togo, Niger, and Benin since May 1 for six months. Togo, heavily reliant on Nigerian electricity and several million dollars in debt to Nigeria’s electricity operator, felt the impact immediately.
Despite these recurring difficulties, ECOWAS states keep relying on the WAGPCo. This year, stressed Minister Aziable, “the WAGPCo will focus on supply security, pipeline inspection, developing a new five-year strategic plan, promoting and managing the WAGP project.” In this regard, our source at Ecofin Agency claimed that “investment in an LNG import and regasification terminal is imperative. Especially for countries traversed by the WAGP: Benin, Togo, and Ghana (underway).” A project of this kind was also announced in Togo in 2018, with Equatorial Guinea, a significant LNG producer.
Diversifying energy sources is a viable solution, but it requires substantial investments in infrastructure, a process that could prove lengthy.
Togo has an installed capacity of around 320MW made up of mainly thermal plus hydro and solar.
Togo recently tendered for a solar battery hybrid project plus they have a 50MW solar park under expansion to 70MW which has been developed by IPP, EMEA Power. Read more
Togo relies heavily on the 100 MW Lomé Thermal power plant, a tri-fuel plant designed to run on a variety of fuels including natural gas. As the largest electricity investment ever made in Togo and the first international financing project ever completed by the Government of Togo, the project required complex negotiations in securing a long-term gas supply arrangement and developing a payment structure to ensure a strong power purchase agreement. When the plant was completed in 2010, it tripled the country’s energy generation capacity.
Author: Bryan Groenendaal
