<<Print>>

A member of the Public Interest and Accountability Committee, PIAC, in charge of communication, Mr Samuel Zan Akolgo has said the issue of security in Ghana’s oil and Gas industry must be closely monitored and demystified to bring transparency in the system.

He expressed concern about how the operators in Ghana’s oil and Gas industry are preventing stakeholders from knowing the exact happening in the industry and making the entire industry look like a monster.

He is of the view that dense security in the oil and gas industry has become a major issue and threatening transparency.  He wondered why the president of Ghana scheduled to visit the Floating       production Storage Offload Vessel FPSOs, would require permission from the oil operators. “Can you imagine that a whole president of Ghana does not have access to the oil rigs and platforms unless he is given permission by the Partners,” he grumbled.

 “The whole issue about oil and Gas business in Ghana is chalky and I think we need to look at how we can make it transparent”.

“There is a need for us to look at security surrounding Ghana’s oil industry, especially when the president of Ghana needs permission to be on the FPSO. The secrecy surrounding the oil industry is a worrying issue”.

Research indicates that since 2010 when oil and gas production offshore Ghana   commenced no member of PIAC has been on any of the oil platforms to ascertain what goes on there.

Mr Zan Akologo’s concerns are also expressed by some major stakeholders like, Joseph Winful, Chairman of PIAC and Allan Larsey of the German Technical Cooperation who argue that such practices could compromise transparency in crude oil lifting and distributions.

Ghana could be producing more crude oil in its Jubilee Field than   the production figures   being recorded due the unavailability of proper checks and control measures on the Floating Production Storage, Offload Vessels, (FPSOs), Chairman of the Public Accounts Committee(PIAC), Mr Joseph Winful has stressed.

Speaking in an interview with the New Crusading Guide at the Launch of the 2016 report on oil and Gas production in Ghana recently, Mr Winful said he doubts some of the figures being recorded by the oil companies as production figures for the year.  Mr Winful said stationing one officer of the Ghana Revenue Authority on the FPSO Kwame Nkrumah and other oil platforms to check and verify the quantity of oil being produced is a great risk since such an officer could be compromised.

He said this happened and continue to happen in the mining sector where mining companies compromise officers of state and the Ghana revenue authority on daily bases in order to have their way. He has therefore called for proper measures to be set in place to ensure that the right quantities are calculated and recorded.  We should have more GRA officials on the FPSO. We can’t rely on only one person for information. We need to do more ensure that or oil resources are properly accounted for” he stated.

The Head of Governance at the German Technical Corporation, Allan Larsey in a related development corroborated this view and said the positioning of a single officer of the Ghana Revenue Authority is breeding disaster in the fight against accountability in the oil and gas sector. He therefore suggested that the number of GRA officials should be increased from one to either two or three on the FPSO to ensure that they undertake proper monitoring checks and balances to help record the right figures for Ghana