The African Center for Energy Policy (ACEP) has reiterated its call for a moratorium on petroleum licenses until the Petroleum Bill is passed into law.

The Bill is expected to be laid before Parliament in October when the House resumes. “We have been consistent in our position that this Bill promises to be one of the most progressive pieces of legislations Ghana will be blessed to have for governing the upstream petroleum sector,” the Executive Director of ACEP said at a meeting with journalist in Accra.

“The Bill proposes the adoption of an open and competitive bidding process for granting oil concessions, and the creation of a public registry for the disclosure of petroleum agreements, contracts and permits,” Dr Mohammed Amin Adam added on Tuesday.

The meeting with the journalists was a follow-up to that conducted by Minister of Energy and Petroleum Emmanuel Armah-Kofi Buah last week. The Minister indicated that he had negotiated parliamentary approval of eight new agreements in the petroleum sector.

But Dr Amin Adam was concerned those agreements might have been open to “abuse, rent seeking and corruption” since there is no exploration and production law.

He said out of the eight foreign companies, only three are listed on stock exchange. “The rest are, therefore, not regulated and their sources of financing are cases the anti-corruption agencies in Ghana should consider investigating.”

The Center accused government of deliberately delaying the passing of the Bill into law to use administrative processes to grant agreements. “Particularly, we have not ruled out ‘fronting’ in some of the deals.”