Parliament Calls for Refund of $5.6m Owed to Petroleum Commission
The Chairman of Parliament’s Energy Committee, Emmanuel Bedzrah, has appealed to the Ministry of Finance to release $5.6 million owed to the Petroleum Commission to enable the regulator to strengthen its operations.
Mr Bedzrah said the funds were initially requested from the Ministry of Finance as budgetary support for the Domestic Debt Exchange Programme (DDEP) between 2019 and 2020, with the understanding that the money would later be refunded to the Petroleum Commission.
He said the Commission had since written to the finance minister requesting the repayment of the funds, which had not yet been released.
“The Petroleum Commission has written to the Minister of Finance for the refund of the $5.6 million, which has still not been paid,” he said.
Mr Bedzrah made the appeal when he led members of the Energy Committee on a visit to the Petroleum Commission’s head office in Accra as part of the committee’s oversight responsibilities.
He said inadequate funding was affecting the Commission’s ability to effectively carry out its regulatory mandate, forcing it to rely on internally generated funds to support some operations.
Mr Bedzrah also raised concerns about the Commission’s lack of a dedicated data centre, saying the institution currently relies on the Ghana National Petroleum Corporation’s (GNPC) data centre.
He stressed that the Commission required adequate funding to develop the necessary infrastructure and technical capacity to effectively regulate Ghana’s upstream petroleum sector.
“If that $5.6 million had been released to them, by now they would have had a world-class data centre that they would rely on,” he said.
The Energy Committee Chairman also expressed concern over the GNPC’s failure to undertake exploratory drilling in the Voltaian Basin despite budgetary allocations for the project over the years.
Meanwhile, the Chief Executive Officer of the Petroleum Commission, Emeafa Hardcastle, said the government was pursuing reforms in the upstream petroleum sector to attract new investment and encourage exploration and development.
She said proposed reforms include amendments to the Exploration and Production Act, 2016 (Act 919), which are currently before Cabinet and expected to be submitted to Parliament for consideration.
The proposed changes include reducing the GNPC’s carried interest from 15 per cent to 10 per cent, extending petroleum agreement tenures to 30 years, revising the signature bonus structure and extending the period for companies to carry forward losses.
By Esther Padmore Amonoo
