Citi97.3FM: Ghana Civil Society to MPs - Don’t Leave Critical Transparency Provisions Out of Exploration and Production Bill

To further improve transparency in the oil and gas sector in Ghana, civil society organizations (CSOs) have recommended to the parliamentary Sub-Committee on Mines and Energy that lawmakers include explicit provisions on contracts and beneficial ownership disclosures in the long-awaited Petroleum (Exploration and Production) Bill, 2014 (E&P bill) before it is passed into law.

At a stakeholders’ consultation meeting on the bill on 6 July, staff from the Natural Resource Governance Institute (NRGI), Africa Centre for Energy Policy (ACEP), and Friends of the Nation (FoN), all lauded the introduction of certain provisions to ensure better transparency in the sector but expressed their concerns on the need for explicit provisions pertaining to contract and beneficial ownership disclosure. (The E&P Bill, when passed in law, will supersede the current Petroleum [Exploration and Production] Act, 1984 [PNDC Law 84]) Ghana has progressed on the extractive transparency ladder since the 2007 discovery and 2010 production of crude oil.

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