Ghana to offer oil blocks in Western, Eastern basins – Dr Adam

Ghana will soon offer new oil blocks in the Western and Eastern basins for exploration through direct negotiations, Dr Mohammed Amin Adam, the Deputy Minister of Energy, has said.

The offer, he said, was part of enhanced exploration strategies aimed ataccelerating extraction to generate revenue, create jobs and support economic growth.

Dr Amin said this on the sidelines of the 2022 Offshore Technology Conference, at Houston Texas, in the United States of America, monitored by the Ghana News Agency.

 He stated that Ghana was seeking to maximise resources and that the Ministry would not relent on efforts to create an enabling environment for investments through legal and regulatory reforms.

“For example, the government over the last two years amended petroleum regulations to allow for exploration in production and development areas without a requirement for a new petroleum agreement, ” he said.

 “We also provided flexibility in determining the size of a development and production area to prevent potential assets near the field from being stranded.”

He said in spite of the global energy transition, Africa’s oil would continue to play a strategic role as oil fields globally were depleting faster than the decline in global demand.

“Ghana is well positioned as production cost remains low in our country. Further to this, our investment environment is very enabling and has been considered one of the most liberal in Africa.

Our petroleum fiscal regime adequately rewards investment capital, provides fiscal stability and certainty against future adverse developments,” he added.

Dr Adam said Ghana’s oil investment climate was the most liberal in Africa and investor friendly offering higher returns to investors.

He added that the licensing regime was transparent, and provided investor certainty and flexibility, and also accommodated different financial products, including risk capital as well as concessional facilities for the development of oil and gas resources.

“Our oil basins are largely derisked, especially the Western Basin, which contains about 80 prospects and 40 discoveries. This means that the potential to make a discovery when you invest in exploration in Ghana is very high,” he noted.

Dr Adam said the potential for growing Ghana’s petroleum and energy industries was huge; and the prospects for accelerating the growth of the economy was much brighter in the future.

 “As already demonstrated by data from the Ghana Statistical Service, real economic growth rate in 2021 is about 5.4 per cent, which outperformed what was projected at 4.4 per cent, a strong indication of the return of our economy to pre-COVID times,” he said.  -GNA