Ghana and Norway have agreed to extend the Oil for Development (OfD) Programme.

The five-year cooperation agreement offers assistance to developing countries in their effort to manage petroleum resources. It has the aim to reduce poverty by promoting responsible management of petroleum resources.

With the current programme ending soon, Chief Director at the Energy Ministry, Lawrence Apaalse, says the Norwegian Foreign Affairs Ministry has expressed willingness to extend it upon a request from Ghana.

Ghana has been on the programme since it discovered oil in commercial quantities. The first five-year cooperation ended in 2014 and a new agreement was signed in September 2015.

The OfD Programme has played a key role in legislation for the petroleum sector here in Ghana. Through comprehensive training a regulator for the upstream industry, the Petroleum Commission became operation in 2014.

A Strategic Environmental Assessment evaluating the consequences for oil and gas exploration and production offshore has also been completed.

But there is still more to be done as Mr Apaalse indicates, “the implementation of the regulatory regime, the laws and so forth are just picking up, so one of the issues was, where do we go on from here?”

Speaking to Joy Business in Norway where he joined the Petroleum Commission for a Trade Mission, Mr Apaalse described the deliberations with the Norwegian Foreign Ministry as a big success.

The details of the extension are yet to be worked out.