His comments were followed by a surprise attack on the project in the Ghanaian media by the executive secretary of Accra's Energy Commission, Kofi Asante.

ChevronTexaco, along with Shell and the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation's (NNPC's) gas subsidiary, are the principal shareholders in the project with state power utilities in Benin, Togo and Ghana picking up modest equity in what is billed as a commercially defined private-sector project.

Yet