The Co-chair of the Ghana Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (GHEITI), Dr Steve Manteaw has called on government to identify and fix the problems accounting for the low investment in the country’s upstream petroleum sector.
He chastised the phenomenon where government expended huge resources on road shows to attract investment into the sector whiles the problems remain unresolved.
Speaking at the launch of the 2024 Annual Report by the Public Interest and Accountability Committee (PIAC), Dr Manteaw attributes the declining investor interest to regulatory, operational, and market-related challenges that require urgent policy attention.
“Ghana is not an attractive investment destination and that is why we have not signed any new contract. Every now and then, we are at international arbitration against one IOC [International Oil Company] or the other. If you look at our fiscal regime we need to do something about it. If you do a cost benefit analysis of our roadshows, somebody owes us money.
“Because we know very well when ExxonMobil was exiting they said our block sizes are too small, data quality too poor….what have we done about it? And then we take money go around the world looking for investors, wasting the money. They won’t come. Let’s stay at home and fix the problems. There’s a reason we are not attracting. ENI made a discovery in Ghana before they made another discovery in Cote D’Ivoire. Now they are producing in Cote D’Ivoire, we are now developing,” Dr Manteaw said.
The observation of the Dr Manteaw corroborates similar concerns raised by other stakeholders in the extractive sector over the country’s diminishing appeal to investors in the upstream petroleum industry.
The alarm follows a five-year streak ending 2024 during which no new petroleum agreements have been signed.
Simultaneously, crude oil production has declined consistently, falling from a peak of 71.44 million barrels in 2019 to just 48.25 million barrels in 2024.
