Roots…in oil

Your Eyewitness has a soft spot for Ghana and as such was quite chuffed that a Ghanaian company will be signing along the dotted line this Tuesday to develop one of the oilfields – Block S7 – that had been auctioned off in 2022!! Cybele Energy is the company, and it’s headquartered in Accra, the capital of Ghana. It was founded in 2012 by the US-educated Beatrice Mensah Tayui, whose bio says she specialises in acquiring “marginal O&G fields”!! She appears to be more of a speculator and had originally made its bid along with an American company, Liberty – which seems to’ve dropped out.
Your Eyewitness hopes that – since all of the contract’s terms are gonna match those of the recent one with Total Energies – the royalty rate of 10 per cent, up from two per cent; cost recovery ceiling reduced from 75 per cent to 65 per cent; the 10 per cent corporate tax; and the 50-50 profit share – the BONUS is gon’ also match Total’s US$15M bonus!! The last your Eyewitness had heard about Cybele’s bid was that the Ministry of Natural Resources was conducting due diligence checks on the source of funding, etc. The bonus payment should be a good indicator – since it doesn’t appear Cybele’s got a particularly stellar record in actual O&G exploration!!
Ghana had struck oil in 2007 – their Jubilee Anniversary year – while we did so in 2015, a year ahead of our Jubilee Anniversary year. In addition to our similar-sounding name, we’ve got lots more things in common with Ghana – you’d think we’re “doppelgangers” – you know, real-life doubles. The resemblance goes as old and deep as our geological formation, 140 million years ago when we were actually joined together!! What’s now Africa separated and drifted apart to form the Atlantic Ocean – which is giving us oil today from under its depths. During the colonial period, Ghana was known as the “Gold Coast”, and we were the “Mosquito Coast” – but with El Dorado in our interior!!
In both instances great expectations were engendered in our long-suffering populace about improving our miserable lot. But with Ghana a decade ahead of us in oil production, maybe their doppelganger experience can offer us a clue of what’s ahead? Their first oil contracts were negotiated by some expatriate Ghanaians with a US oil company, but the incoming administration later accused them of corruption and re-examined the contracts!!
The Ghana National Petroleum Corporation – formed to oversee the nation’s oil interests – is regularly overshadowed by the Energy Ministry, especially when oil contracts are to be signed!! Contracts are regularly doled out to politically connected persons, but because the Government changes with regularity between the two major parties, there’s a continuous disruption of sustained development.
We gotta be careful with speculators!!

…and work
As your (conscientious) Eyewitness scours the dailies – and his social media feeds – for signs of life in the Opposition, he got two mentions. There was PNC’s Parliamentary leader – Chicken Man – fresh from the bruises his ego suffered after his low-down body-shaming taunts at LG Minister Priya were called out by even PNC supporters!! It wasn’t that he’d arranged a giveaway of chicken wings (even!) from some of his chicken joints!! He wants Pressie to IMMEDIATELY announce he’s gonna dole out at least a $150,000 grant to every Guyanese for Christmas!! That – of course – includes himself, and maybe that explains the touch of hysteria your Eyewitness discerned in his voice!! Gotta have his chicken fix for Christmas!!
Then there’s the always energetic PNC MP Mahipal. He actually called for the Parliamentary Sectoral Committees to get going and start keeping tabs on the PPP!! Now this is real Parliamentary work and calls for attending meetings, demanding and studying reports on what’s going on – and then issuing reports!!
Sanction Man trembling!!

…and indignation
The AG noted the weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth by the Opposition – especially from WIN and their Scrapes – at the PPP. He wondered why no moral outrage at having a tax cheat as LOO!!