The Nigerian oil company, Sahara Energy Resources, has dismissed allegations that it won a contract to lift crude oil to Ghana without competitive bidding. Sahara Energy Resources made the headlines in early 2001 when it emerged that the company had won a lucrative contract to lift crude oil to Ghana after the NPP administration ended an existing contract with another company, Vitol Oil Company.

Since then, the company has been lifting crude oil for Ghana. But after nearly 3 years of silence and a refusal to be drawn into the controversy, Sahara’s managers are now talking. The company invited a team of Ghanaian journalists who spent the greater part of last week touring its facilities in urban and rural Lagos, Abuja and Port Harcourt.

JOY FM’s Akwasi Sarpong who was on the team says the debates about Sahara were hot. The arguments threatened to destroy friendships and engulfed journalists and media houses in pitched battles, which were played out at press conferences and media review programmes on TV and radio.

At the center was a Nigerian company, Sahara Energy Oil Resources, run by a team of young individuals, whose figure-head Tonye Cole, was said to have won the contract for his company on two key points - his father’s close relationship with President Obasanjo and alleged Ghanaian shareholders close to government who acted as local agents and facilitated the deal for Sahara.

Prominent names mentioned included Databank’s Ken Ofori Atta, businessman Dr. Kwame Nyantakyi and the former VRA boss Dr. Charles Wereko Brobbey.

But Tonye Cole insists that his father played no role in securing the deal for Sahara. And as for the so-called Ghanaian shareholders who allegedly facilitated the deal for the company, Tonye Cole argues that it is not irregular for a foreign company to have local contacts to introduce them to a local industry of interest.

But the fact that the named Ghanaian so-called agents or shareholders could have played a key role in securing the deal for Sahara is not lost on the Sahara boss. But Tonye Cole said the first thing that anybody needs in an international transaction is a local agent who will act as a facilitator.

Tonye Cole also dismissed suggestions that Sahara won the contract to cart about 30,000 barrels per day of oil to Ghana through a non-transparent bidding process.

Having asserted itself as a reliable company in the oil industry for the lifting of petroleum products in Ivory Coast and Ghana, Sahara is looking forward to a similar feat in Senegal.

It also hopes to widen its role in the Ghanaian oil industry with the construction of tank farms to store products shipped to Ghana, the supply and distribution of petroleum products, providing bunkering services and marine support for vessels that come to the Tema port.