Ghana Beyond Aid: Will Exploitation of Oil, Underground Natural Resources Change National Economic Fortunes?

“May our oil be the pure “black gold” which brings the black star of Africa more blessings than gold brought the Gold Coast,” – Kofi Bentil

With all due respect and humility, His Excellency, President of the Republic of Ghana, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, if the exploitation of the black gold is the basis for your vision of a Ghana Beyond Aid, then in our holistic assessment and judgment, it is a mirage which cannot be achieved at any point in time so long as Planet Earth exists, if we continued to apply wrong policies in the management of our natural resources.

Ghana has lost it all several decades ago and is on the verge of losing the last opportunities that the black gold provides in the light of what your predecessors have done, which are being accelerated under your regime.

We call upon Professors and Doctors of Political and Development Economics to tell Ghanaians how Mr. President’s vision of a Ghana Beyond Aid could be achieved in the face of prevailing conditions whereby Ghana’s subsoil natural resources and others are controlled by foreigners under very bizarre and unbelievable agreements. In the name of attracting investments Ghanaians are only getting the crumbs falling from the tables of the foreign exploiters of these resources.

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Between 90%-98% of foreign exchange earnings generated from gold, bauxite, diamonds and manganese are retained outside by the foreign exploiters and their local subalterns. Now we have the black gold and the story is the same; almost 80% of total earnings are retained by the foreign oil companies.

Ghana has discovered lithium around Saltpond and the Cape Coast areas, the first discoveries in West Africa estimated to be worth US$150 billion.

Lithium is a rare mineral which is used for the manufacture of all types of long life batteries for mobile phones, laptop computers, solar energy batteries, for home batteries, for space satellites and a host of others.

With the advent of electric vehicles as the next generation vehicles to replace fossil fuel vehicles, lithium batteries would store the needed energy to propel these vehicles, signifying a major boost in demand.

Unfortunately, Ghana has sold and transferred her 100% sovereign ownership to an Australian company, IronRidge Resources. The implication and ramification of this action by our government is not different from what has happened to our gold, bauxite, diamonds and manganese, among others.

We want to sound a note of caution here. The President’s vision is just a conjecture; it cannot be achieved on the back of the numerous burdensome and nuisance taxes forced on Ghanaians which can be avoided through a fair and equitable sharing and utilization of the wealth generated through the exploitation of our sovereign natural resources.

The Centre for Natural Resources and Environmental Management (CNREM) and the Fair Trade Oil Share – PSA Campaign Team have observed and noted with grave concern beyond all reasonable doubts that the British, through the Commonwealth Secretariat, and the Norwegians have conspired to mislead and are wrongly advising Ghana on how to manage her upstream oil sector to the advantage of these advisor-nations and their oil companies.

The Commonwealth Secretariat was secretly responsible for changing the PSA legal framework which was on our statute books long before the commercial discovery of oil in 2007 to the monstrous and bastard Royalty Tax System now called the Ghana Hybrid System.

The Model Petroleum Agreement of Ghana clandestinely back-dated to 17/08/2000 backing the Royalty Tax System was smuggled in to replace The Model Production Sharing Agreement of 1995 between the Ghana National Petroleum Corporation (GNPC) and the contractor during ex-President John Kufuor’s government to conform with the terms in the Kosmos contract and the subsequent ones that followed. Mr. Tsatsu Tsikata is in position to testify to the correctness of the above statement of facts, if he could be made to speak.

The John Mahama Administration had all the opportunities in the world to reverse the trend but rather consolidated it to the detriment of Ghanaians. They joined the gravy train set in motion by ex-President Kufuor by allocating up to 5% shares to themselves through front men in the name of local content participation to be carried by the foreign oil companies, the legalization of political greed and corruption at the highest level.

In the words of Nana Osei Bonsu, CEO of the Private Enterprise Foundation (PEF) on September 20, 2013: “The NDC government does not want to rock the boat”.

Sir Paul Collier, Professor of Economics, University of Oxford in his inaugural speech at the 2012 New Year School at the University of Ghana, Legon advised Ghana not to copy the Norwegians blindly because of the differences in the environment and capabilities of the two countries.

Ghana did not listen but went ahead and passed this most exploitative and economic slavery agreement called the Ghana Hybrid System Law, Act 919, under a Certificate of Urgency almost at midnight of August 4, 2016 under pressure, as she was cunningly and remotely teleguided by the USA and British Embassies, the World Bank and Oxfam America through the so-called Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) and think tanks funded by them. This action by the Ghanaian Parliament gave legitimacy to these oil contracts which hitherto were illegal because they were at variant with the existing legal frame work which supported PSA.

The African Centre for Energy Policy (ACEP), whose leaders transformed into former Energy Minister John Peter Amewu and the leader Dr Mohammed Anta Amin his Deputy, became the de-facto leader and mouthpiece of these CSOs and think tanks. Its past top executives, who are now the minister and deputy ministers of Mines and Energy, executed the conspiracy against their own country through falsehood and intellectual public deceit claiming the superiority of the Hybrid System over the PSA and that there is nothing like PSA any longer. They were on Britain’s DFID budgetary allocations while carrying out the misinformation campaign.

ACEP and Revenue Watch Institute, both set up by the Western interests, were responsible for misinforming and brainwashing every sector of the public that Ghana was doing right.

On behalf of the FTOS-PSA Campaign Team, we call upon Mr. Peter Amewu, Dr. Mohammed Amin, Professor Kwaku Appiah-Adu of Central University Ghana, Professor Kwamina Panford of North-East University, USA, and Professor John Asafu-Adjaye of IEA to come out and tell Ghanaians where on the African continent the Hybrid System is working perfectly and is preferred to the PSA in this 21^st Century. Are their counterparts in neighbouring Togo, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Chad, Kenya, Uganda, etc., less wiser and intelligent than them, and so advising and adopting PSA for their countries?

Are they saying the current fiscal system under which Ghana is handing over her birthright and sovereign natural resources to foreigners for crumbs is the best?

Respected Mr. Kwame Pianim, if you knew PSA was a better fiscal regime, why did you not advise for its adoption in your advisory capacity in the Petroleum Commission?

Mr. Emmanuel Kofi Duah, how does the Act 919 which you claimed is robust protect the interest of Ghana if 80% of total revenue accruing from the oil and gas goes to foreigners?

Mr. Moses Asaga, is the Royalty Tax Hybrid System achieving almost the same results as the PSA which you claimed it was going to do 10 years ago?

With due respect, Nana Otuo Siriboe II, we have provided the Council of State more than sufficient further and better particulars you requested for on March 21, 2017.

Sir, has the Council of State drawn the attention of President Akufo-Addo to the complete robbery in the name of investment taking place? Horrible agreements that would prevent attainment of his Ghana Beyond Aid vision are being implemented and supervised under his watch. In our estimation, Ghana would be losing over US$80 billion plus under the Exxon Mobil and Aker Agreements. Equally, a US$30bn loss from the Jubilee Field is to be expected. At the end of 2019, Ghana lost over US$10bn plus by operating under the Royalty Tax/Hybrid System

Nana Adjoa Hackman, a member of GNPC board in her paper titled, “Was Ghana right in choosing Royalty Tax for the oil sector,” admitted on page 18 that oil lifting entitlement is more under the PSC, and since under the PSC it is oil output that is shared between the state and the contractor, more lifting entitlement by the state would generate a greater revenue under the PSA/PSC than the royalty tax system.

Ben Dagadu, former deputy Minister of Petroleum, said PSA could give the country over 50% of the accrued money while under the concessionary system a sovereign nation gets less than 25% of total revenue accrued, Graphic Business, Tuesday March 8^th – 14, 2016.

Prof. Austin Gareth on the platform of IEA in September 2017 declared: “It will be better to keep the oil find underground if its exploitation will go to benefit expatriates or foreign investors at the expense of nationals.”

The IEA followed with a conference in December 2017 under the theme: “A Decade after Oil Discovery in Ghana: The Economic Impacts and Policy Implications”.  At the end of the conference, it called on government to take steps to review oil contracts with extractive firms and blamed the poor earnings by Ghana on the outmoded PNDC Law 84. We considered this statement very erroneous and challenged it.

The Fair Trade Oil Share–PSA Campaign Team wrote a rejoinder and distributed it to all the major media houses, including Graphic, but they all refused to publish it, an indication of the sad complicity of the media in the conspiracy to cover up and hide the truth from Ghanaians and keep them in complete darkness forever.

Our question to the IEA is, would they have called for a review of the oil contracts, if Prof. Austin Gareth had not made that declaration on their platform?

It has been over two years since their call for a review of the oil contracts; what steps have they taken towards achieving that? If IEA had been involved in behind the door consultations with government on the issue, government would not have gone to Parliament with those amendments to Act 919 which further blurred and worsened the Ghana Beyond Aid vision of President Akufo-Addo.

Ghana’s Parliament has betrayed the conscience and aspirations of Ghanaians by leading them into economic slavery and bondage.

Until the arrival of Prof. Austin Gareth, the IEA, CSOs and other think tanks supported the system in place.

The Petroleum Commission, a brain child of the Western interests, GNPC and the Ministry of Mines and Energy are collaborating and aiding the foreigners to rob their own country in the name of attracting investment. The CSOs and think tanks, all agents of neo-colonialism, are being used to hoodwink the masses to protect the interests of their paymasters.

Mr. President, your vision Ghana Beyond Aid is a myth which can never be attained because the policy and decision makers surrounding you are shooting you in the foot and seriously misleading you. They are rather protecting the interests of foreigners as against your own citizens, as they are made comfortable at the expense of the general good and welfare of all.

The actions of our duty bearers, the Parliament and Government have violated the UN Resolution on Permanent Sovereignty over Natural Resources, General Assembly Resolution 1803 of 1962, reprinted in General Assembly Resolution 3171 of 1963 and the Charter of Economics Rights and Duties of State, General Assembly Resolution 3281 of 1974, all of which Ghana is a signatory to.

“Ghana’s petroleum fiscal regime should be reformed to ensure maximum long term revenue generation, even if the state is not fiscally dependent on oil revenue. Much of the regime is currently formulated to attract investment to a young industry. Given the long resource horizons of its newly discovered reserves, Ghana is in a position to enact measures that will ensure long-term revenue stability. These measures should account for government’s changing financial position, and the fluctuation in oil prices. The regime can also achieve greater take by increasing the state’s sharing in production sharing agreements”.

– Sara Zedingle Ghebremusse (2014). Assessing the Petroleum Fiscal Regimes of Nigeria, Ghana and Cameroon, Published thesis for a Master of Laws, Faculty of Law, University of Toronto.   

Ghanaians, wake up from your slumber and free yourselves from this economic slavery and make Ghana Beyond Loans instead of Ghana Beyond Aid your agenda.  The billions under your feet and sea are being carted away by foreigners with the active help of your misleaders who are on the take.

“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing, “ Edmund Burke.

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SOLOMON KWAWUKUME

Executive Director/CEO

CNREM