In less than 10 years Ghana’s oil and gas will take fall – Stephen Manteaw
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Witten by: Eyiram Norvisi Mawunyegah
19th April 2021
A member of the Civil Society Platform on Oil and Gas (CSPOG) has stated that the country’s, oil and gas industry will fall if some changes are not made. Dr Stephen Manteaw, said data available shows the country has not made any improvement in the past five years to invest in oil exploration.
Dr Manteaw said, the country depending on these oil fields is slowly depleting. “If we are not careful as a country, in less than 10 years, our oil and gas industry will take a nose dive. If you look at the production data, you find that we are almost exhausting our reserves. Take Jubilee and we have about half already gone. You take TEN fields and we are about one third gone, and Sankofa Gye Nyame is about a quarter gone. So unless we make any new discovery in less than 10 years our oil industry will be on its knees, we will have no oil industry and therefore no oil revenue to finance our free SHS and so this is dire.”
He added, many international companies that exploits the oil are also moving to renewable energy as part of the world’s new energy transition agenda. Explaining the move will make it tasking for Ghana to get investors to help produce oil. A domestic oil company is needed to take charge of the survey and the making of oil.
“That is why it becomes urgent for the Ghana National Petroleum Corporation (GNPC) to begin to take its operatorship role seriously. If we can get any of the international partners that will support GNPC in that regard, I will encourage the government to give that support and to provide whatever it will take for GNPC to build this capability.” the Civil Society Platform on Oil and Gas (CSPOG) observes that “Ghana’s oil and gas industry faces grim prospects, as the world turns its attention from fossil fuels to renewables”.
They stressed the country’s impossibility to attract new investors with ability to explore and produce the adequate oil reserves sitting untapped. Dr Manteaw in a statement said government should empower the GNPC and build their capability to help salvage the situation.
“Until GNPC moves into operatorship with the support of the companies currently operating in the country it will be difficult to be able to rake in much revenue.
“Going forward we are encouraging that perhaps when we talk about empowerment we will put some of our oil revenue where our mouths lie.”
“That means giving GNPC that opportunity with additional revenue to buy into some of the ongoing projects and then with the revenue they derive from those project they can up their take in other projects. That will build that momentum towards full operatorship.”
