CSOs push for passage of marine pollution, oil exploration bills

Civil Society groups are calling on government to fast-track the passage of the Marine Pollution and Petroleum Exploration and Production Bills into law.

The groups have expressed qualms about the failure of Finance Minister Seth Terkper to touch on those bills when he presented the 2015 budget to Parliament Wednesday.

The two bills, when passed, are expected to provide a regulatory framework to manage operations in offshore oil and gas development.

Programmes Coordinator of Friends of the Nation – one of the CSOs pushing for the bills’ passage – Kyei Kwadwo Yamoah, told STARR BUSINESS that the bills will fulfil two main purposes.

“The first one is to ensure that we maximise the revenue that is coming out and the second one, which is very important, is to ensure that the damage on livelihood and environment is minimised as much as possible, so that communities who derive their livelihood from the marine space will also continue to get their livelihood, and it’s true that they will take care of their families and then they’ll make a living,” he explained.

“So when we damage the environment and then lead to the destruction of their livelihood, then we are creating poverty in those areas,” Yamoah added.

Executive Director of Centre for Public Interest Law (CEPIL), Augustine Niber told STARR BUSINESS the speedy passage of the two bills will inure to the benefits of Ghanaians.

“Now we are developing and we are producing oil, so we need a new legislation that will take into consideration current happenings in the world and ensure that transparency and good governance provisions in the bill are improved, so that we can have smooth provision of our oil and that will inure to the benefit of the people of Ghana,” he explained.

He said the “Marine Pollution Bill for some time [has been] in parliament and just about two weeks or so, the petroleum exploration bill has also been laid before parliament.

“We are calling on Parliamentarians to look carefully at the provisions of the petroleum revenue management, exploration and production bill and the Marine Pollution bill. There are provisions there – very encouraging provisions – because they are clear improvements over PNDC law 84 but there are still governance provisional issues that need to be addressed.”