Government needs to respect tenures and provisions of agreements – David Ampofo

Chief Executive Officer of the Ghana Upstream Petroleum Chamber, David Ampofo, has urged government to respect the provisions and tenures of agreements with upstream petroleum sector players.

According to him, push by civil society organisations among others for government to review its agreements with the upstream players following their recording of large windfalls is premature and unbelievable.

He said the government has a duty to attract new investment into the sector if it expects to generate more revenue; hence premature reviews of contracts might give the country a bad reputation in the investor community.

“When I hear it I cannot believe it. You have to be in a position to do certain things. The market always dictates it. If really it is a matter of deciding that no this is what you want to do instead, go ahead. In the end, the market will tell you, either you get investors coming in and working on those new terms that you want or notice that nobody comes at all.

“And remember, we’re dealing with an asset that is not there forever. You’re here with me and we’re going through an energy transition. The thing that worries me is the risk that if Ghana is not careful, it can end up with what we call stranded assets,” he said.

He urged that government rather waits for the tenure of agreement to end before reviewing these contracts.

“When the time comes by all means do that. I’m saying when you have agreements they’re time bound, they have provisions, respect that. If the time comes to review an agreement by all means review it. But you don’t just get up and say ‘I have agreement with you and now I feel suddenly I’m not so happy so I want to review it.’ If the agreement makes provision for that by all means you can do it,” he said.