Senegal’s energy minister says the power cuts that hit the country hard in September have made one thing clear: the country cannot keep relying on expensive imported fuel and ageing equipment. El Hadji Abdourahmane Diouf said on Thursday that the solution is to move towards using Senegal’s own natural gas to generate electricity.
The blackouts came at a bad time. Dakar and other parts of the country faced repeated outages throughout September, with residents sweltering in intense heat. The state electricity company, Senelec, explained that the problems were caused by a combination of fuel-supply strains and equipment failures at key power plants. One major issue was a floating storage unit used by Karpower, a Turkish-owned power ship, which broke down and knocked out around 200 megawatts of capacity. The system was already under pressure because demand had surged to 1,400 megawatts in August, far higher than the 1,300 megawatts Senelec had expected for October.
The bigger problem is that Senegal still depends heavily on diesel to keep the lights on. Diesel is expensive, and when global fuel prices rise, the cost of generating electricity goes up with them. The country has an installed capacity of more than 2,300 megawatts, but the system still could not meet demand because there was not enough fuel and some equipment was not working.
Diouf said the government’s plan is to change that by building the infrastructure to bring Senegal’s own gas onshore and use it for power generation. The country is expected to build around 340 kilometres of gas pipelines to transport its natural gas. The first section of the GTA–Gandon pipeline, an 85-kilometre connection between the Greater Tortue Ahmeyim gas field and a 250-megawatt power plant in Gandon, was recently installed in Saint-Louis. The project is estimated to cost €275 million.
The government believes domestic gas can cut energy costs by up to 30 per cent when combined with renewable energy, efficiency measures and subsidy reforms. But officials have also warned that building pipelines alone will not automatically make electricity cheaper. The final price depends on generation costs, how the infrastructure is financed and how the entire electricity sector is structured.
Diouf also said Senegal has not signed any new oil or gas contracts since 2017, but the energy ministry has redrawn its map of exploration blocks, making them smaller and potentially more attractive to investors. Out of 113 offshore and onshore blocks, five will be evaluated by Italian oil company Eni, while the remaining 104 will be presented to investors at a roadshow.
For now, the power cuts are a reminder of how fragile Senegal’s electricity system remains. The government has a long-term plan, but until the gas infrastructure is built and the system is modernised, residents in Dakar and beyond will continue to face the risk of the lights going out.
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