Economist and political risk analyst, Dr. Theophilus Acheampong, has disclosed that since Ghana started producing oil in 2011 till date, the country has been able to generate a little over $31 billion.
Mr Acheampong remarked that Ghana had earned $6.5 billion out of the entire worth of all the oil it has lifted during the last ten years.
“What we did was take the oil price figures for each of the years, then take the production,” he explained. We know that value is determined by two factors: volume and price.”
To put his statement in context, he stated, “At the moment, the entire Ghanaian economy is only worth roughly $74 billion.” So, over the course of ten years, nearly 45 percent of the oil extracted totals $31 billion. Ghana has earned 6.5 billion dollars out of the $31 billion.”
Mr Theo Acheampong made the disclosure on Wednesday during a public lecture hosted by the Public Interest and Accountability Committee (PIAC) to discuss Ghana’s petroleum income management.
The talk, delivered at the University of Ghana’s Cedi Conference Centre in Legon, was titled “Ten Years of Petroleum Revenue Management and Use in Ghana: The Way Forward.”
According to the economist, an early estimate predicted that the Jubilee field, where the FPSO Kwame Nkrumah, a floating production storage and offloading (FPSO) vessel operates, would produce 120,000 to 140,000 barrels per day by the time production began.
“What was quite clear when we spoke to a number of the stakeholders is the fact that in their view, it looked as though the development of Jubilee was rushed. So we used about two and half to three years to bring Jubilee on production and subsequently when production started, because of what looked like a rush development process, there were some problems with the wells.”
“So we had to spend more money and remedy those problems,” he added.
In terms of how the money was distributed, Mr Acheampong said the Annual Budget Funding Amount (ABFA) received the largest amount of $2.6 billion over the time. The GNPC (Ghana National Petroleum Cooperation) was awarded $2 billion.
“Also, the Ghana Stabilization Find (GSF) has received $1.39 billion of total revenues, whereas the Ghana Heritage Fund (GHF) has received $586 million of the total allocation,” he said
Ghana’s crude oil output has climbed from 3,236 barrels of oil equivalent per day (bopd) in December 2010 to 183,361 bopd in December 2020, according to him.
Meanwhile, Mr. Acheampong stated that the overall institutional evaluation of government institutions involved in petroleum income administration was positive.
However, he said “the only exception was the Investment Advisory Committee, which by law is meant to advise the Minister on the instruments that we put Ghana petroleum funds to. There were some years that the Committee was constituted and some information were bit dated and not forth coming.”
He predicted that although Ghana’s three fields (Jubilee, TEN, SGN) peaked in 2020, which is to last for three years, there would be a decline if nothing is done by way of new in-fill developments on the existing fields or new fields coming on-stream.
Source: myjoyonline.com
So sad