The Civil Society Platform on Oil and Gas (CSPOG) is calling on the government to as a matter of urgency take necessary steps to contain the risk of stranded oil in Ghana as the world gradually embraces the use of renewable energy.
As a result of the Coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic last year, the oil industry in the world suffered a great deal.
Although the industry has started to bounce back from the fall, experts are not expecting that it will reach the levels of 2019.
In the midst of the decline of the industry, investments in exploration and new development projects in Ghana have suffered greatly with the reserves of existing producing fields fast depleting.
As a result, the country risks an imminent downturn in the medium term, and a stranded asset in the long term.
Having observed the trend, the Civil Society Platform on Oil and Gas has charged the government to take steps to ensure Ghana’s oil industry does not become moribund.
The CSPOG wants the Ghana National Oil Corporation (GNPC) to take its drive towards operatorship seriously, and to begin negotiations with potential partners towards arrangements that will help to fast track the achievement of this ambition.
“The government, through the Ministry of Energy and the Petroleum Commission, should ensure strict and effective implementation of the country’s local content regulations to build the needed capacity for Ghanaian businesses to be able to provide support services to the National Oil Company when it becomes necessary for the country to exploit its own hydrocarbon resources, just as is the case of coal in the Powder River Basin in the USA,” a release from the CSPOG signed by its chairman Dr. Steve Manteaw has said.