Chinese firm, Sinopec International Petroleum Service Corporation is threatening to abandon work on Ghana’s Gas infrastructure.

The Gas infrastructure, which is being constructed in the Western Region of Ghana, is supposed to be funded from a $3 billion loan from the China Development Bank (CDB), but the start of work was pre-funded by Sinopec. The infrastructure also includes a gas processing plant.

Ghana National Gas Company revealed that Sinopec served a notice to leave the project site because of  the West African country’s commitment to pay back.

Disbursement of the CDB loan to the Ghanaian government encountered challenges which slowed down the process.

Speaking to journalists at a gas forum in Accra on Wednesday, CEO of the Ghana National Gas Company George Sipah-Yankey revealed that “The President (John Mahama) sent a team to China to go and discuss the issue with CDB and they’ve come back. We are still in the resolution stage now and we’ve had some warnings from Sinopec that in the event that there are further delays of payment then they will not be able to proceed further.”

“In fact they wanted to suspend work this week but after some discussions with them they are now working and we hope that we can resolve the issue before they suspend work again.”

Ventures Africa has also learnt that Ghana’s Ministry of Finance has begun processes to work on this matter to settle some of the bills.

Dr. Sipa-Yankey was however hopeful that if work continues without any break, certainly before the end of this year Ghana gas should start commercial operations.

The $700 million gas infrastructure project will process gas from the Jubilee Field for power generation. The facility is expected to process about 150 million standard cubic gas a day.