Chief Executive Officer of the Ghana Upstream Petroleum Chamber, David Ampofo, is urging government to re-engage already existing investors in the upstream petroleum sector to invest more into the sector.

According to him, that is a more viable plan to grow the sector than embarking on roadshows to attract new investors.

He noted that government’s recent spats with upstream petroleum players like Tullow are counterproductive and would prevent further investment in the sector.

“I see government spend time on roadshows looking for new investments, and I’ve always said that’s fine. But there are people here who have already invested, they have infrastructure in place, let them invest more, they can do more.

“They have FPSOs sitting there, ENI has fields its discovered, you’re looking for people to come and discover, I’m saying they have discovered and yet there’s no production partly because of what is going on,” he said on PM Expres Business Edition.

He noted that should government continue to take an adversarial stance against petroleum companies, it would make the environment hostile to both existing and new investors, in the process driving them away.

“Strictly speaking, they should be busy, we should be asking them to produce a bit more, but we’re not going to do or get any of this done in an environment of arbitration. That is what I meant by when you can take it out of court, do that so that you can get on with the real business,” he said.