Stakeholders in the extractive sector have called on government to assist the Ghana Revenue Authority, GRA, to establish an oil and gold production monitoring center to help it monitor and determine the quantity of oil, gold and other minerals produced by the mining and oil and gas companies operating in the country.
There is therefore the need for the country to have an independent body to monitor oil liftings and gold extraction to make the system transparent, stated Boa Amponsem, of Boas and Associates.
Currently there is only one GRA official assigned to the Floating Production Storage Offload (FPSOs) and the mine fields across the country; and stakeholders are frightened that one person on a huge vessel of a sort or a huge mine field could be compromised. There is the experience in the mining Industry where officials of the Ghana Revenue Authority who are assigned to mine fields are made to be fed and given shelter by the mining companies and as a result they become part of the company staff.
Ghana could be producing more crude oil in its Jubilee Field than the production figures being recorded due to the unavailability of proper checks and control measures on the Floating Production Storage, Offload Vessels (FPSOs), and officials have indicated
Some Energy experts have challenged figures being recorded by the oil companies as production figures. The Chairman of the Public interest and Accountability Committee, Dr Steve Manteaw said there is the need to bridge the gap between transparency and accountability.
He said stationing one officer of the Ghana Revenue Authority on the FPSO Kwame Nkrumah and other oil and mining platforms to check and verify the quantity of oil being produced is a great risk since such an officer could be compromised.
He said this happened and continue to happen in the mining sector where mining companies compromise officers of state and the Ghana revenue authority on daily bases in order to have their way. He has therefore called for proper measures to be set in place to ensure that the right quantities are calculated and recorded. We should have more GRA officials on the FPSO. We can’t rely on only one person for information. We need to do more to ensure that our oil resources are properly accounted for” he stated.
By Adu Koranteng
