The Member of Parliament for Adansi Asokwa, K.T Hammond wants the Energy Minister to cancel some oil exploration contracts signed under the previous NDC administration.
According to him, the permits of most of the companies have gone beyond
the three-year mandatory period without any successful oil find. Thus
there is no need for such licenses to be extended.
K.T Hammond made these comments in the debate on the State of the Nation Address.
“Mr. Speaker, if you look at the contract, they are given three years
in the first phase to do the appraisal and all that. All of these
companies have gone in the past three years. They have gone past the
gestation period,” Mr. Hammond said.
His call comes weeks after the governing New Patriotic Party (NPP)
blamed the NDC for the $28 million monthly losses the country is
incurring over the Eni gas agreement.
The NDC government negotiated and signed that deal in 2015.
The Minority in Parliament subsequently attributed the losses to the
failure of the NPP government to implement to the letter the deal
negotiated by the Mahama government.
The Minority Spokesperson on Mines and Energy, Adams Mutawakilu,
explained that Ghana wouldn’t have been paying such huge sums of monies
if the NPP had continued from where NDC left off.
“We had taken the necessary steps to ensure that the entire
infrastructure relating to the ENI project should have been in place as
of June [2018]. But they [NPP] came, and they did not continue from
where we had left off. If Cabinet had approved an agreement, you have to
continue. If they had continued with it, I don’t think we will be where
we are today.”
“And today, we are paying about $28 million for no use of gas.
Meanwhile, plants are in Tema which need gas to run. This is an
insensitive government, they will tend not to do anything, and when the
challenges are staring at them, they intend point accusing fingers at
NDC. We will not tolerate this any longer,” he added.
Cancel oil contracts signed under NDC
