Government has indicated its intent to revoke petroleum exploration licenses from four companies that have left concessions awarded them fallow, after securing the licenses.
This indication was given by the Deputy Minister of Petroleum, Mohammed Amin Adam, recently in Cape Town, South Africa.
The defaulting companies involved are not yet known but it appears that by not developing the oil fields, they have breached cardinal requirement in the licenses they acquired to start development within five years.
According to the Deputy Minister, the revocation will happen in the coming weeks. He also vowed that government is going to crack the whip to ensure that its petroleum resources are aggressively developed.
Mohammed Amin Adam’s revelations comes as follow up to an announcement that the Petroleum Commission had made in 2018 to review petroleum licensees and advice government on what to do with those not developing their blocks.
The four companies in question were flagged after a review of 14 licenses that were warded in recent years.
Between 2011 and 2016, Ghana awarded some 17 blocks to independent oil exploration companies. Four of the companies being flagged for none development of the fields awarded to them presupposes that the remaining nine are developing their fields. Unfortunately, information is not readily available on these companies and their activities, with a supposed petroleum register that has been put online by the Energy Ministry being rather vague on information about the total number of companies awarded licenses.