The Saltpond decommissioning project's consultant contracts were awarded, and there have been allegations of procurement violations relating to those contracts, according to the Ghana National Petroleum Corporation (GNPC).
In response to the accusations, GNPC published a ten-point statement on Friday that clarified the project's procurement procedure.
The corporation emphasized that the details pertaining to the contract awards had been distorted in a news article.
It claimed that the Saltpond Field, which was found in 1970 and started producing in October 1978, saw a number of production-related shutdowns until being completely shut down in 2015.
The Ghanaian government chose it to oversee the project, it continued, in reaction to the decision to decommission the Saltpond Field. The Saltpond Field Decommissioning Contract was signed by GNPC, Hans & Co. Oil on January 12, 2022, and Gas Limited, the decommissioning specialist of choice.
Given their lack of decommissioning expertise, GNPC said they looked for a project management consultant to oversee quality assurance and control for the Saltpond Field Decommissioning Project (SFDP).
According to the statement, GNPC submitted for single-source procurement on October 19, 2021, but after conducting an internal assessment, the tender was later cancelled for legal reasons. In July 2022, after conducting a thorough assessment, GNPC reapplied to the Public Procurement Authority (PPA) for a project management consultant, choosing this time to use an open competitive bidding approach per PPA's advice.
Only two partnerships—Ensol Energy Ghana Limited (Ensol) and TSB Offshore Inc. (TSB) and PAP Energy Limited and Luy Resources—out of the three companies that indicated interest filed bids at the Request for RFP proposal stage.
According to the announcement, GNPC chose the Ensol-TSB partnership to get the contract after carefully weighing all of the applications.
Ensol informed GNPC of its partner TSB's resignation from the project management consultant contract on March 7, 2023, and suggested a successor. TSB decided to prioritize other contracts it had over the project management consultancy contract, according to Ensol, since the procurement procedure took so long—from the time the tender was submitted in October 2022 to the time the contract was executed at the end of January 2023.
There is no indication in the correspondence between GNPC and Ensol that any GNPC-related misconduct led to TSB's withdrawal, so anyone making this claim must be mistaken.
It must offer proof. The internal due diligence procedure for GNPC is now reviewing Ensol's request to substitute another company for TSB. Therefore, it is untrue that the PPA opposed Ensol's suggested new partner, according to the statement.
Regarding a different claim, GNPC explained that its technical teams had not finished almost 70% of the consulting work before the project management consulting contract was granted.
The project management consultancy's three (3) phases—pre-decommissioning, decommissioning, and post-decommissioning—should be recognized. Decommissioning, which is now occurring, and post-decommissioning are included in the crucial phase. Given that some pre-decommissioning had already been completed when the project management consultant contract was signed, the ultimate contract price was under With the shift in scope, three million US dollars (USD3,000,000.00) were appropriate.
In addition, GNPC informed the public of its dedication to ensuring the Saltpond Field Decommissioning Project's success, given the project's substantial consequences for environmental health and safety.
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