The Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency (MIGA), the wing of the World Bank responsible for political risk insurance has confirmed that it has temporarily withdrawn its cover for the FPSO Kwame Nkrumah. The temporal suspension is to allow for investigations into the $5 million contract signed between MODEC, the company that supplied the FPSO to Ghana and Strategic Oil and Gas Resources. The 225 million dollar cover offers companies which have invested in the Jubilee Project the assurance that their investments would over the next 20 years be insulated from litigation and risks that often come with regime changes in Africa. The National Insurance Association had earlier denied any such suspension, but Joy Business has learnt the cover provided by the consortium of local insurance companies with their foreign counterparts is quite different from the cover from MIGA. According to officials in Washington the suspension is necessary because the World Bank would want to be satisfied that the agreement is transparent and above board. Senior Communications Officer at MIGA, Mallory Saleson tells Joy Business the suspension was the collective decision of all the parties involved. “We agreed to the suspension in order to conduct due diligence into the conditions of a service contract of between MODEC and Strategic Oil and Gas Resources,” she said. She was not ready to comment on why the details of the service contract between the two parties was not made known until after her outfit signed their insurance contract. She hoped that investigations will bring out the necessary issues of transparency to bring the project back on track. “We have to investigate and look at all the facts and when we have all the facts from that time we will be able to go forward,” she concluded. There has been the suggestion that production of crude oil from the Jubilee Field before the end of the year will be delayed if the issues are not resolved in good time. Strategic Oil and Gas, the company embroiled in the controversy is said to be partly owned by former GNPC boss, Tsatsu Tsikata. Source: Joy Business/Myjoyonline.com/Ghana