PRESS RELEASE 05-Dec-2011

NDC Government is Lying About The Missing 4.58 Million Barrel Crude Oil.

NPP UK and Ireland has accused the NDC Government of lying about the missing 4.58 million barrels of Crude Oil from Ghana Jubilee Oil Field as well as false accounting on the amount of oil leaving our oil fields. Readers can recall a publication by the New Statesman newspaper on 23/11/2011 which cited the inconsistencies in production volumes from two different sources, suggested that as much as 4.5 million barrels may have gone missing. But the government has sharply come out to deny the report as usual.

According to the Statesman, whilst Tullow put out a production figure of 22 million barrels, the Finance Minister indicated in the budget that 17.42 million barrels has so far been produced. But the Finance Ministry says the two production figures cannot be compared as they relate to different periods. The first question is, why the Minister should intentionally decide to account for only the revenue between the period of January and September whilst Tullow Oil Plc accounting is for the period Nov 2010 and Oct 2011 according to the report released on the company’s official website on 9th Nov 2011. Even with this report, three months of oil revenue missing.

On 17th May 2011, the Daily Graphic hinted that “Ghana risks losing millions of dollars in oil revenue following the revelation that the FPSO Kwame Nkrumah platform at the Jubilee Field is operating without its exporting flow meter”. The report further stated that “the officials of the Ghana Revenue Authority and other officials are not allowed on board the tankers and, therefore, the quantity of oil is determined by officers representing the buyers. Representatives of the buyers, according to sources, rather supplied the revenue agencies with figures on the amount of oil exported; something which the experts say is unacceptable”. Up till today, only two out of the four export flow meters removed are fixed. The question is, why?

The NPP UK still stand by the assertion that the Prof Mills’ - NDC government have always been lying about the Ghana oil management and have outrageously lied over the current missing 4.58 million barrels of crude oil and intended to pull wool over the eyes of Ghanaians with false accounting that would have meant that the difference between the Tullow figure of over 22.4 million barrels and the finance minister’s figure of 17.42 barrels would never have been accounted for. NPP UK and Ireland would like to draw readers attention to a number of press releases especially on title: NPP UK & Ireland Gives GNPC 14 Days Ultimatum to refit flow meters of FPSO Kwame Nkrumah (dated 5th June 2011) which we sent to the media houses about the lack of flow meters on board the FPSO Kwame Nkrumah, forcing an admission from the Energy Minister Dr. Oteng Adjei that, that was the case and that the flow meters had been removed for calibration. Between May and July 2011, crude oil was lifted from the storage of FPSO Kwame Nkrumah without any functioning flow meters. We contacted a number of reputable ultrasonic flow meter manufacturers and retailers in UK & US and reported that it did not cost anymore that £2500 per unit. At the time of our press release we opined that the lack of alacrity on the part of the government to replace the flow meters amounted to an intention to steal the crude oil. We also pointed the nation to the breach of contract under Section 11 of the 2004 Oil Agreement between the Government of Ghana and Kosmos to continue to lift the crude without metering. The 4.58 million barrel is not only falsehood that the government is feeding us with. On Tuesday 12 April, 2011, the reuters.com reported that the U.K.-based Tullow, the operator of the Ghana's sole producing field said “Crude oil production from Ghana is nearing a rate of 80,000 barrels per day and should reach its 120,000 barrels per day by July, August 2011. Our source at the field has shown that the production at the Jubilee Field reached 115,000 barrels per day as at the 2nd week of July 2011, but the unfortunate thing is that the Minister of Finance reading his budget for 2012 only projected that “for the 2012 fiscal year, based on expected crude oil price of US$90 per barrel [there will be] an average production volume of 90,000 barrels per day”. Meanwhile the Tullow Oil plc has projected 180,000 barrel/day by the middle of 2012. This is a clear indication that the NDC government was yet again projecting to steal more of the oil in 2012.

Then again on Thursday, 20th October 2011, in highlighting the outlook of the economy at a press conference in Accra, Paa Kwesi Amissah Arthur, Governor of the Bank of Ghana, (BoG) said “Ghana earned $1.97 billion from the export of crude oil from January to September 2011”. But during the Budget Hearing in Parliament in 16th Nov 2011, Dr Kwabena Duffour, Minister of Finance said “the total volume of crude oil from the first three lifting amounted to 2,980,720 barrels which realized a total sum of US$337.3 million (GH¢ 506.0 million). This is an absolute lie from the finance minster, and we believe our questions have not been different from many rational Ghanaians who are asking today as to why that under the purview of the Professor John Evans Atta Mills that the revenue going into people pockets through corruption is more than the revenue getting into the government coffers. This is serious.

The rebuttal by the government about the 4.58 million barrels crude oil missing today is not enough and the reasons given do not go far enough. If the crude oil we produce is going to be the basis for projecting our GDP to growth to the 13.6% as the budget states, then it behooves on the government to give us a much better and transparent accounting of how much crude has left our shores and how much money the country has realised from the oil proceeds.

We therefore stand by our statement then and now that the government intends to put their grubby hands into our till and take our oil money with false accounting. The lack of metering between April and July was deliberate and was intended to shortage us in accounting for how much crude oil has been produced and the cargoes which have been safely exported.

Hayford Atta-Krufi

Chairman, NPP UK & Ireland