Gaseous politics: contradictions and moral frontiers of the energy transition in Ghana

In Ghana, new oil and gas discoveries at a time of global decarbonization and energy transition have put into question the viability of the country’s hydrocarbon reserves and their promises of prosperity and development. As the country anticipates stranded assets, a discourse of carbon justice has emerged around new oil and gas extraction that emphasizes differentiated responsibilities for carbon emissions and colonial legacies of energy underdevelopment. In this paper, I explore the assemblage of what I call the “moral frontiers” of the energy transition through the case of natural gas expansion. I focus on the Atuabo gas processing plant in Ghana’s Western region, built in 2016 during an acute energy crisis to provide indigenous gas from the oilfields to the grid. Amidst growing opposition to and declining investment in oil, natural gas at Atuabo is presented as a “bridging fuel” that reconciles, physically and ethically, the contradictions of global decarbonization imperatives with local demands for industrialization, energy access, security and sovereignty. Through the materiality of gas infrastructure at Atuabo – including the land acquisition process, the take-or-pay contracts of its IPPs, the operations of the plant and its applications, and the contested environmental impact of the plant – I argue that gas’ liminality as a transition or bridge fuel reshapes the moral and political possibilities of fossil fuels in a global but unequal energy transition.