The Minister of State at the Ministry of Energy, Herbert Krapa, has called on global investors in the oil and gas industry to take advantage of the safe investment regime, robust democracy, and stable and peaceful atmosphere in Ghana and invest in the country.

“And I believe that investing to bring out the resources under the ground would be worth the investment. I invite everybody here in Ghana to explore and take advantage of the opportunities that exist in our country in terms of oil and gas, exploration and production, services, gas infrastructure, and all the other auxiliary services that such an opportunity comes with,” he assured.

Mr Krapa made the case for Ghana at the official opening of the week-long 30th Africa Oil Week (AOW) at Cape Town in South Africa.

The world-class conference, networking and exhibition programme brings together governments, regulators, global operators, power producers, investors and service providers, who work to develop policy, secure investments and nurture partnerships that will promote sustainable development and energy transformation across the continent and beyond.

Ghana’s delegation includes the Chief Director of the Ministry of Energy, Wilhelmina Asamoa, the Chief Executive of GNPC, Joe Dadzie and the CEO of the Petroleum Commission, Egbert Faibille Jr.

Discoveries

Mr Krapa announced that Ghana has made significant discoveries since it started exploring and producing and realised it needs to also move towards a more sustainable exploration and production.

“We have four sedimentary basins, three of which are offshore, and then one onshore. We have three producing fields and about 40 oil and gas discoveries."

"And all of that in one of the basins which affirms the tremendous potential that we have in Ghana in terms of carbon production. We have worked tirelessly to ensure efficient exploitation and optimization of our petroleum resources through several policy reforms and practical steps to implement these policies,” he disclosed.

Legal

Mr Krapa noted that the government was aware that the industry thrives on transparency and predictability of the legal, regulatory, and fiscal frameworks and that was why attention continues to be focused on that because that remains the fulcrum around which that decision is made to enter into action here or another.

“The laws that govern the upstream industry in Ghana allow companies to, for instance, carry forward losses from petroleum operations for five years, recover all the operational costs, capitalize exploration and development costs, and recover them over five years."

"We are also very keen and aware of the fact that the front-loaded elements in our petroleum agreement in terms of payments to the state need to be fed to production and we do that so that most of the risks are eliminated and much of the investment is at the outset in terms of exploration and production stages,” Mr Krapa stated.

He indicated that companies that are in production are also allowed to undertake exploration activities in their development and production areas under existing petroleum maintenance so that prospects that were initially not commercial or that are not commercial standard can be developed without the need for new petroleum agreements.

“We encourage infrastructure sharing to reduce petroleum costs and also reduce the time between exploration and first oil,” he said.

Service Delivery

Touching on the area of service delivery in the upstream industry, Mr Krapa told the global audience that the local content regulations have now also made it possible for companies to undertake contracts in Ghana without having to incorporate through channel and strategic partnerships.

“The Ministry of Energy and the Petroleum Commission have collaborated to promote data acquisition over the country's sedimentary basins through several multi-client agreements for data-position over the country's offshore basis.

On the onshore basin, the National Oil Company, the GNPC, has also invested quite heavily in the position of 2D seismic data and geological samples collected in the onshore Voltaian Basin.

2D seismic data is covering the Bolton Basin as a result of the pioneering work that has been done by the GNPC. And that has resulted in three exploration licenses for blocks in the basins being awarded already. And there are several unlicensed blocks in the basin which we see partnerships to develop,” Mr Krapa indicated.

Predictability

He gave the assurance that to further the transparency and predictability of the upstream industry in Ghana, the government have recently formulated the policy for onshore exploration and production to address the regularities of the onshore environment and eliminate all the bottlenecks to onshore and oil and gas exploration and production in the country.

This policy, he explained, would eliminate all forms of risks pertaining to agitations from communities where petroleum activities take place and also ensure the safety of oil and gas infrastructure and the staff of the companies.

“It introduces a very robust, predictable discovery regime that will be mutually beneficial to all the parties,” he added.