Government to spend $50bn in establishing petroleum hub - Deputy Minister hints

Deputy Minister for Energy in charge of Petroleum Dr. Mohammed Amin Adam has disclosed that government ambitious plan of establishing a Petroleum Hub in Ghana to serve the whole of the West African sub-region will cost the country a whopping $50 billion.

The Petroleum Hub, which is a twelve-year development project, if established is expected to increase the presence of major international oil trading and storage companies, create regional trading champions and encourage joint ventures between local and international companies for Foreign Direct Investments, Technology, and knowledge transfer as well as wealth creation.

“We think this is very strategic development option because it will add value to our economy,” he noted.

Dr Amin Adam who was speaking in an interview with Oman FM explained that the petroleum hub will have all the infrastructure that is required to store petroleum product, to distribute, to refine and also process products so that we can be able to meet both domestic and export market.

“We need infrastructure that can support the downstream industry. We need tank farms, refineries, oil Getty, pipelines. If you don’t have that kind of infrastructure you will not be able to distribute product from one place to another,” he said.

According to the deputy minister, the objective is to ensure that “we don’t have products shortage and queues at stations for petroleum products.”

N-Gas debt

Dr. Mohammed Amin disclosed that government has made significant headway by settling greater part of the debt owed Nigerian Gas(N-GAS) for gas supplied to Ghana during Mahama administration, but failed to pay.

He said the current government had also improved upon the frosty relationship which existed between Nigeria and Ghana because of our inability to settle our indebtedness.

He explained this has made Nigeria to show some form of good faith by continuing with the supply of gas to Ghana because “they have signaled that we will eventually clear all our debt.”

“We want to ensure that there is no debt,” Dr Amin intimated.

N-Gas now complement

With government efforts to increasing Ghana’s gas production capacity, Dr. Amin expressed the view that gas supply from Nigeria will be a complement to indigenous gas production because “the quantity we are producing is more than the supply from Nigeria.”

He said the current government is working at ensuring that there is sufficient indigenous gas supply so that if N-Gas fails to supply gas to Ghana, there would be no gas shortage in the country.