Board Chairman of the Ghana National Petroleum Corporation (GNPC), Freddie Blay, has denied claims of selling a 50 percent stake of Jubilee Oil Holding Limited (JOHL) in a deal with a South African firm, PetroSA.

This comes after close to 30 Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) Coalition on Extractive Governance had raised red flags over the deal and therefore called for the immediate removal of Freddie Blay and GNPC CEO, Opoku-Ahweneeh Danquah.

Addressing journalists in Accra on May 25, 2023, the GNPC Board Chair stressed that; “I cannot on my own go and sell GNPC assets.”

“There was no intention to do so, what happened was that there was a 7% interest in JOHL which government through GNPC decided to acquire but this 7% forms part of Anardarko’s share. We are not selling, it was 7% that we were all struggling to have, and Anadarko insisted they were also interested, and there was disagreement about it, and this started in 2021,” Blay explained.

He continued, “They said they were going for arbitration but over seven months it did not happen, and I proposed to them that instead of taking it, we could sit down and take 50-50.”

On Monday, May 22, documents leaked in the media suggested that Freddie Blay in his capacity as the GNPC Board Chairman is said to have written to PetroSA offering it an equal split in the interest held by GNPC’s subsidiary, Jubilee Oil Holdings Limited.

The documents also revealed that Minister of Energy, Dr. Matthew Opoku Prempeh was against the said agreement which resulted in him writing a letter to the Presidency to oppose the deal with the South African oil firm.

MA/FNOQ