Following Pecan Energies' submission of a plan of development (PoD) for the Deepwater Tano Cape Three Points (DWT/CTP) block to the Ministry of Energy, the country's upstream oil and gas industry is anticipated to experience some good feelings.
The operator of the DWT/CTP block was Pecan Energies, previously Aker Energy, with a 50% stake. Its partners were Lukoil Ghana, with a 38% stake; the Ghana National Petroleum Corporation (GNPC), with a 10% stake; and Fueltrade Limited, with a 2% stake.
According to the petroleum agreement, oil corporations can begin procurement contracts without consulting the Ministry of Energy; as a result, local Ghanaian enterprises may receive certain contracts under the local content Legislative Instrument, but they might not amount to the full amount intended.
local content history
The oil industry used to be characterised by upbeat attitudes in which the local industry players were free to clamour for jobs after approval and regulators enforced the local content, but that has drastically decreased since the development of the last two independent oil fields, TEN and Sankofa Fields.
High hopes accompanied Aker Energy's entry into the upstream industry in 2018, but those hopes have since waned as a result of the company's failure to deliver on its promise to work closely with licence partners and authorities in order to submit a PoD in the second half of 2018, with the first oil anticipated in the fourth quarter of 2021.
"The development concept will build on experience derived from operations on the Norwegian Continental Shelf, a country with an enviable record of transparency and enormous experience in the upstream sector," stated Mr. Jan Arve Haugan, then-CEO of Aker, in 2018.
Field expansion
The crude is anticipated to develop the nation's economy and increase the welfare of the populace at this crucial time thanks to the permitted PoD and corresponding money to invest in offshore Ghana.
For instance, numerous personnel, including welders and fabricators, scaffold technicians with all the necessary qualifications, procurement officials, and many other support services, were requested to return home once Ghana's upstream oil and gas industry operations began to decline. Some of these individuals did not survive the shock.
To make matters even worse, several businesses failed following the COVID-19 outbreak as oil prices plummeted, and some, particularly Ghanaian enterprises, have yet to make a full recovery.
As a consequence, the profits from the construction of the nation's second and third independent oil fields saw a lot of bullish actions and put the Ghanaian oil service business on a large scale into collapse, forcing many into unrecoverable debt.