The Africa Center for Energy Policy (ACEP) has charged the Ministry of Energy to undertake some serious introspection to find out why big companies like ExxonMobil and British Petroleum, (BP) pulled out of the competitive bidding process for the 3 oil blocks put on offer by the Government.
Out of the 14 companies that were prequalified to bid for the 3 blocks that was put up on offer, only Tullow Oil, ENI and Vitol as well as First E and P submitted bids.
While describing the number of bids submitted as disappointing, the Executive Director of ACEP Ben Boakye, cautioned that, if the necessary lessons are not learnt from this bidding exercise, future exercises might suffer.
Adding that, “I think we need to do some introspection, probably find out from the companies why all of a sudden; they are not interested in competing for the oil blocks, for it to inform our subsequent bidding rounds, indicating that, such actions can affect the next rounds, hence more disappointing, which may make one to be interest in the blocks.
Mr. Boakye also urged relevant stakeholders to question why a large number of companies (16) rather applied for direct negotiation for the opportunity to explore blocks 5 and/or 6 in Ghana’s offshore oil area.
“What signal does the high interest in direct negotiation send? In the coming days we have to really dig deeper to find out why the companies want to explore the direct negotiation option, is it because that side of the equation is weak and therefore everybody wants to exploit or because there are some constraints built into the competitive tendering process that wards the companies off? So we have to dive deeper into the two-pronged approaches to learn and make our competitive tendering process better.”
Background
The government, through the Energy Ministry, earmarked on six oil blocks for exploration, which three of the blocks; 2, 3 and 4-were to go through a competitive bidding process while two blocks-5 and 6-were supposed to be for direct negotiations.
One of the blocks was reserved for Ghana National Petroleum Corporation (GNPC).
The deadline for the submission of bids for the blocks elapsed at 3pm, May 21, 2019.
However, at about 15:15 GMT Tuesday, when the bids were opened in the presence of pressmen and representatives of some of the companies which were pre-qualified, ExxonMobil and British Petroleum were missing from the race.
Chief Director at the Ministry of Energy Lawrence Apaalse, told the press that, the Ministry received information from the two companies, requesting direct negotiations for blocks 5 and 6 that they were no longer interested in the blocks.
Meanwhile, ENI and Vitol, as well as Tullow Ghana Limited, submitted bids for block 3 with First E&P submitting a bid for block 2.
However, there was no bid for block 4, interestingly; the ministry received about sixteen applications for direct negotiations.
The original pool of companies that put in a bid for the 3 oil blocks include China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC), Cairn Energy, Qatar Petroleum, Global Petroleum Group, First E&P, Sasol, Equinor and Harmony Oil and Gas Corporation.
The rest include ExxonMobil, British Petroleum, Tullow Ghana Limited, Total, ENI Ghana, Vitol, Kosmos Energy and Aker Energy.
Source: Ghanaweb.com
