LET'S HAVE AN INTEGRATED NATIONAL OIL POLICY (PAGE 29)

Story: Vincent Adedze, Tamale

PARTICIPANTS at a day’s national consultative forum in Tamale on Oil and Gas Development have called for an integrated national policy on oil and gas to effectively regulate activities in the sector to ensure the rapid growth of the economy.
They equally stressed the need for the government to evolve strategies to put on hold any attempt to privatise the Tema Oil Refinery (TOR) and to protect local oil companies from being overshadowed by their foreign counterparts.
“All political parties must also join in the discussions to make inputs into drafting a healthy national policy that would enhance the country’s fortunes particularly in the oil and gas sector,” the participants further pointed out.
The forum was organised by the Northern Regional Co-ordinating Council (RCC) and was aimed at involving stakeholders in discussions on oil and gas issues to facilitate the development of a comprehensive national policy for the sector.
Participants at the forum included oil and gas experts, parliamentarians,district chief executives, traditional rulers, politi-cians, representatives of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and technocrats.
They noted that issues such as payment of royalties and capacity building of personnel, must be critically looked at if the country was to derive maximum benefits from the sector to boost the economy.
The Member of Parliament for Tamale South, Mr Haruna Iddrisu, stated that local oil companies, as well as the Bulk Oil Storage and Transport (BOST), should be expanded and protected against giant foreign oil companies that had the tendency of ruining the future of “our local companies”.
A Member of the Council of State and the Paramount Chief of the Kpasinkpe Traditional Area, Naa Professor John S. Nabila, emphasised the need for proper vetting and screening of personnel that would be entrusted with various duties regarding the oil exploration.
“Let us not be self-centred but honest and selfless so as to ensure that we derive maximum benefits from the oil exploration in this country,” he stated.
The Regional Director of Food and Agriculture, Mr Sylvester Adongo, stressed the need for more capital to be injected into other sectors of the economy particularly agriculture.
“We need to diversify the economy and ensure that our quest for oil exploration and land use does not affect farming activities and the country’s resolve to increase food production,” he pointed out.
The Regional Minister, Alhaji Mustapha Ali Idris, noted that the region had “almost inexhaustible deposits of lime from Buipe in Central Gonja all through to Daboya in the West Gonja District; Brazilians tried exploiting these but probably due to lack of investment capability they abandoned the site”.
“Various governments of Ghana since colonial times had made strenuous efforts to explore the possibility of discovering oil in the country including places like Yendi, Nasia and elsewhere in the north,” the minister further observed.
The Deputy Director in charge of Environmental Assessment and Audit of the EPA, Mr Ebenezer Appah Sampong, who briefed participants on the draft report on the national forum on oil and gas development, said there was the need for the establishment of a stabilisation fund to absorb possible shocks in case of donor funds withdrawal when oil revenues started accruing to Ghana.