Review of the Legislative and Regulatory Documents for the Oil and Gas Industry

Abstract

Report of the Legislative and Regulatory Advisor ; This report documents the activities and findings the legislative and regulatory advisor during his visits made between 19th October and 17th November 2009 to the Ministry of energy of the Republic of Ghana. The purpose of the visits was to meet the officials of the Ministry of energy in Accra and obtain a first-hand brief of the requirements of the Ministry for their review of their draft legislative and regulatory documents for the Ghana oil and gas industry. In June 2007, Ghana discovered commercial quantities of light crude oil with significant amount of associated natural gas in its offshore area. The discovered oil and gas lies in the Jubilee Field, which straddles the offshore Deepwater Tano and the Deepwater West Cape three Points Block, and is located some 50 kilometres from the Ghanaian coast in water depths of between 1020 to 1720 metres. Associated gas is reported to have been tested at a gas-to-oil ratio of 1,058 standard cubic feet per barrel of oil. Oil production of 120,000 barrels per day would therefore provide produced associated gas production of about 127 million standard cubic feet per day. To optimise the benefit of having indigenous supplies of oil and gas, the Government of Ghana now has to effect an administrative and management transition with respect to its petroleum industry. It has to move from simply encouraging investment in exploration to that of managing petroleum production, the enormous values arising from such, and the wise utilisation of the produced oil and gas to drive economic development.