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Ghana’s Oil Find, A Silver Lining
By Gideon Sackitey, Ghanadot, ACCRA

The Date June 18, 2007 would definitely be etched on the minds of Ghanaians for all their lives. President John Agyekum Kufuor called the events of the day “the silver lining of a very dark period in the history of the country.”

It was the day that Ghanaians joined the league of oil producing nations, having been informed of the discovery of oil in commercial quantities by Kosmos Energy; Anadarko Petroleum and Tullow Ghana Limited. Specifically, between 300 million to 400 million barrels.

The consortium engaged in oil exploration in Cape Three Points in the Western Region on Monday made the simultaneous announcement.

Kosmos made the announcement in Accra, while Tullow and Anadarko made theirs in London and New York, respectively.

Even though Mr James C. Mussleman, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Kosmos Energy pleaded with President John Agyekum Kufuor and Ghanaians to hold on for a while for more findings and activity, our expectations as a people cannot be held down, since in the words of the President himself it is going to lift us up out of the doomsday prophesy some have slated for this country.
The fact is that the Consortium struck 40 miles deep into the sea in the west of Cape Three Points, near Axim.
Kosmos, which has signed a seven-year exploration agreement with Ghana is looking forward to working with the Government and people of the country to develop the resource.
President Kufuor’s position was that the discovery should embolden and encourage all Ghanaians to be optimistic about the country's future as the prospects were brighter than ever before.
To Kosmos, he charged to extract the resource in no time, to break its own record of 14b months in Equatorial Guinea, by moving quickly to develop Ghana's reserve to make the country overcome its current energy problems.
"We pray that the Company would be successful so that our country would not become a beggar in the energy sector anymore,” President Kufuor said knowing to well the nation’s current status of one of the world’s poorest countries.
He argued that the discovery was a vindication of the good decision of ensuring that the GNPC concentrated on its core business operation.
The Government has since 2001 made strenuous efforts to overcome the problem of energy and crude oil production.
In London, Mr Aiden Heavey, Chief Executive Officer of Tullow was ecstatic as well saying that the discovery of oil in the Mahogany Well-1 represents a major event for the Republic of Ghana and for Tullow, adding that, “based on the evidence collated to date, ultimate resources are likely to be in excess of previous estimates."
Mr Heavey put the present estimates at between 300 million barrels and 400 million barrels.
In New York Bob Daniels, Anadarko's, Senior Vice President, Worldwide Exploration, described it as an exciting start to our 2007 exploration programme offshore West Africa.
He said to date the well has been drilled to a depth of approximately 12,083 feet and is planned to reach a total depth of 13,780 feet, adding that once the well reached the target depth it would be suspended for evaluation and appraisal.
Kosmos Energy, the block operator and Anadarko, technical operator, hold 30.875 per cent of the shares each; Tullow has 22.896 per cent; Sabre Oil and Gas Limited has 1.854 per cent and E.O. Group, a Ghanaian oil and gas company, holds 3.5 per cent of the shares in the Block.
There are 126 crew members including 16 Ghanaians on board the USA Bedford Dolphin Drilling Ship undertaking the exploration exercise.
As Mr Mussleman said, "We are pleased that the first well in our multi-well West Africa exploration drilling programme is a success." But Ghanaians cannot be anymore happier since this means quite a lot to them. To many it is the end of a long period of constantly having to adjust to changing oil prices on the world market which immediately translates into the hiking of prices of all other products in the country.
That President Kufuor and government officials popped Champaign when the news was broken to them at the Castle on Monday tells you how much it means to them and all Ghanaians. For the President it lifts a heavy burden off his shoulders given the potential of the raking in of millions of dollars that actually would make the natin Ghana quite powerful in the sub-region.
To him things are quite bad for the country. But as he explained, steps taken by government are lifting us up significantly. But the oil find would move things faster and give us more clout in our dealings with our development partners and neighbours.
But the reality is that companies producing the oil have to be competitive and stay in business. Hence that aspect of having to buy below the world price may be debatable and actually far from reality.
Also, we as a people should work at ensuring that the oil find does not split us any further than we have come so far as is the case in certain parts of the world where they produce oil, especially Nigeria.
But as someone pointed out, the discovery of oil is not the end of our problems as a people. If anything at all, it is definitely the beginning of very unlikely turn of events. My word is that, we learn from the sad and debilitating mistakes of earlier discoveries by some countries. We must make sure that we are not cheated, short changed or left in the cold in negotiating acceptable terms in our dealings with the oil companies.
Government should not look at political expediency, but look out broad and wide to pick up very endowed persons to do the negotiations. For this, Ghanaians are waiting eagerly for the right things to be done. Anything less and you will hear them.
In the meanwhile, we will be drinking Champaign.

Gideon Sackitey, Accra, June 18, 2007, Ghanadot.com

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 

 

 

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