By Yunus S Saliu
President Adama Barrow, in his address at the State Opening of the 2019 Legislative Year at the National Assembly last Thursday stated that the government has a 10% participating interest in the license at signature and “Gambia National Petroleum Corporation (GNPC) will represent government interest in the Al Block license agreement.” Adding that GNPC has also entered into a Joint Operation Agreement with BP, which will help build the capacity of young Gambians and enhance sharing of resources and expertise.
He noted that the government through the Ministry of Petroleum and Energy has completed the first successful bidding rounds for the country’s Petroleum Oil Blocks. He said this has resulted in the signing of a Petroleum Exploration and production License Agreement with British Petroleum (BP) for the Al Block. He added that the GNPC
The President as well deliberate on the significant transformation of the petroleum sector as cabinet has approved the reform. He as well talked about the improvements on the supply of electricity in the country due to policy and investment initiatives introduced by his government.
His said “this has increased the electricity generation capacity in the country from forty-five Mega Watts in 2017 to eighty-five Mega Watts in 2019, thus exceeding the peak load of seventy Mega Watts. Despite challenges with the transmission and distribution (T&D) network, we have reduced T&D losses from 22% in 2017 to 20% in 2019.”
He went further that in March this year, the European Union launched a One Hundred and Forty-One Million Euro (€141,000,000) project for clean energy for The Gambia. This initiative is expected to generate twenty-six Mega Watts of solar energy distributed across four hundred kilometres, and will benefit one thousand rural schools and one hundred health centres country-wide. The project is aligned with the NDP policy objective of increasing the country’s energy mix with renewable growth from 2% to 40% by 2021.
In addition to the OMVG substation project launched in Soma earlier this year, President Adama Barrow said another substation is under construction in Brikama as part of a rollout plan of the two hundred and twenty-five KV line from Soma to Brikama.
“Furthermore, my government has secured a grant of Sixty-Six Million US Dollars (US$ 66,000,000) from the World Bank to provide electricity to all rural and peri-urban villages within one hundred kilometre radius of the Brikama and Soma OMVG substations. And our goal is to address the energy needs nationwide.”