NGO says oil agreements must be made public

Accra, Dec. 16, GNA - An Accra-based non-governmental organisation (NGO), "ABC Charity Trust Foundation", on Wednesday asked the public to demand to know all oil agreements signed on the country's oil resources. It said in a statement in Accra that the government should also be ready to review all agreements that were found to be inimical to the state. The NGO said it was throwing a challenge to various Government departments and agencies that had been involved with the signing of Ghana's present agreements with the oil exploration/drilling companies currently engaged in Ghana, to come out with certain required explanations. It said their statement was also to call on all Ghanaians to join in a coalition of advocacy to call for review of those agreements that were clearly seen not to be in the best interest of the nation.

It noted that at a recent conference on Ghana's oil potential, the issue of the apparent absence of any transparent and effective mechanisms to monitor and verify how much crude oil would be actually loaded into ships and carried away each day for the next 20 years came up.

The NGO said it decided to submit the issue to the court of public opinion after it failed to get any of the relevant agencies and organisations to make available to it copies of the Agreements or comment on the matter.

"The oil companies have refused to comment," it said, adding that government institutions also failed to make available to them copies of the agreements.

"We have therefore had no option than to call upon the general public to join in the process to demand the needed answers and explanations." The NGO said the least the Government could do now was to probe and review the agreements already signed. "It should be possible for government to demand that refineries be set up either by the companies, which are already here (country) or to bring in other investors to do some refining," it said.