A member of the Mines and Energy Committee of Parliament has rebuffed claims by the Minority that government is likely to pay judgement debt in the Eni/Springfield impasse.
The matter, he said, is in arbitration and not yet decided and therefore mischievous for the Ranking Member of the committee to insinuate the state will lose the case.
Responding to the claims by Mr. John Jinapor, Hon. Paul Twum-Barimah, the Member of Parliament for Dormaa East said President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo is committed and making the best efforts to resolve the impasse between the companies, ENI/ Vitol and Springfield Ghana.
“The government of President Nana Akufo-Addo will not manage this country in a way that will create inconvenience for businesses and result in the payment of judgement debt.”
“I am urging the people of Ghana and stakeholders in the oil and gas industry to remain calm and to support government in this process,” he assured.
In 2020, then Minister of Energy, Mr John Peter Amewu, in accordance with Section 34(1) of the Petroleum (Exploration and Production) Act, 2016 (Act 919), directed ENI and Springfield to execute unitisation with respect to the Sankofa field in the OCTP and Afina discovery in the WCTP contract areas.
Prior to the directive, the minister had been satisfied by a geophysical and geological analysis in March 2018, which showed that the Sankofa Cenomanian Reservoir extended into the WCTP Block 2 contract area.
The situation saw the industry stakeholders calling on the government to encourage the companies to use arm’s length dialogue and common-sense approach to resolve the differences to produce oil from the straddling fields.
The many interventions to resolve the situation proved futile and Eni Ghana filed a suit at the International Tribunal in London, United Kingdom, to challenge the directive by the Ministry of Energy, asking them to unitise Sankofa offshore oil field and Afina oil block operated by Springfield E&P, a wholly Ghanaian upstream player.
According to him, notwithstanding the court case, the ministry is committed to ensuring the issues are resolved expeditiously to enable the unitisation of the fields for optimum recovery of petroleum from the fields for all parties.
Mr. Twum-Barimah noted that had the laws, rules and regulations governing the industry been fully obeyed, there wouldn’t have been any need for institutions to call on the President to intervene in any impasse.
The ministry, he said, is working hard to ensure there is optimum recovery of petroleum through activities that conformed with international best practices.
He appealed to the Ghanaian public to ignore the rants of the minority in parliament seeking to create fear and panic in the ever-growing and flourishing oil and gas industry and the government in the effort to make Ghana a place of choice for oil and gas business.