NPP has deteriorated oil sector by 10 years – Kofi Buah claims

Member of Parliament for Ellembelle Constituency, Emmanuel Armah Kofi Buah, has accused the Akufo-Addo-led government of dragging the progress of the energy sector by a decade.

According to the former Energy Minister, despite the NDC ‘fixing’ the country’s oil sector, the NPP have done a ‘non-commendable job’ since coming into office.

Speaking in an interview on JoyNews, he averred that the bureaucracy in the current administration is one of the reasons the Ghana National Petroleum Corporation (GNPC) is not operating effectively as it should with little to no investments in the sector

In his words, “It is sad to say this but I think that this [NPP] government has rolled back our progress for ten years. The ten years progress we the [NDC] made. They have weakened the local content regime; they have weakened the regulatory institution and in fact the national oil company. Today go and look at the focus of the GNPC. The NDC’s focus is to make sure that the national oil company, GNPC is driving to a place where they will discover oil and operate it for Ghana….”

He explained; “the only way you can compete is to make sure that you’re operating like the private sector. But all these reporting requirements and bureaucracies in the [NPP] government did not allow the GNPC to operate well. So, we decided to create another arm of GNPC that is solely private-sector driven. That’s ExploreCo. The ExploreCo was to help GNPC get to that destination and compete.”

“When a government comes and says we don’t need ExploreCo, throw it away, takes the 24 percent we gave to ExploreCo and gives it to the foreigner, we are not making progress.”