The minority in parliament has urged the government to transfer the shares held by Jubilee Oil Holding Limited (JOHL) to the Ghana National Petroleum Commission (GNPC) in order to reassure the public that the government and other stakeholders are properly overseeing the nation's petroleum resources.
"This will only go a long way to ensuring proper accountability and effective monitoring of the revenues accruing from our petroleum resources," a statement signed and released by the Minority Leader, Dr. Cassiel Ato Forson, said.
The call was made in response to the minority's worries that the JOHL's assets were not currently subject to the terms of the Petroleum Revenue Management Act (PRMA) 2011 (Act 815) or that the revenues were not being transferred to the Petroleum Holding Fund (PHF).
The PRMA establishes guidelines for the management of the nation's oil and gas earnings.
"Revenues from the assets are accrued to or dispensed from the PHF as authorised by the Act.
It therefore begs the question of where the earnings are deposited, how they are used, and under what governance framework they are handled if the JOHL asset is as valuable as indicated and no money is being sent to the Petroleum Fund. Does the Auditor General have access to the books? The statement was emphatic.
Slush money
According to the Minority, the government is allegedly using the JOHL profits as a "slush fund" to conduct a variety of activities that have not been authorised by Parliament via the standard GNPC budget approval process.
The statement continued by citing the recent deposit of $100 million in oil money into JOHL's accounts as support for their worries about the state losing out on taxes derived from such profits.
What's more alarming is that the minister mentions a plan to use JOHL's assets to restructure GNPC's current obligations with LITASCO in his letter to the Executive Secretary to the President.
We can only assume that JOHL's production share will be forwarded and sold in order to raise this money, it said.
Therefore, the minority issued a warning that such an act would lack transparency, increase debt to a government already in financial crisis that was participating in an IMF programme, and perhaps violate the constitution.
In order to prevent the government from mortgaging the future of the nation, the PRMA was established to restrict the amount of "forward selling" of its oil and gas assets that it could engage in.
Claims of a Sale
The Minority also urged the GNPC to promptly and clearly respond to claims that Dr. Matthew Opoku Prempeh, the Minister of Energy, and its Chairman, Freddie Blay, were negotiating a deal to transfer about 50% of JOHL's shares to PetroSA, a South African state-owned oil company.
In reality, it said, "The Minority will file an urgent question for a clarification of this entire saga upon the resumption of Parliament."
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