Ghana Oil and Gas Conference 2022

The Deputy Minister for Energy, Mohammed Amin Adam spoke about the impact of the Upstream petroleum industry on the environment. He pointed out that Ghana’s carbon emissions had increased three-fold with the Upstream Sector contributing largely due to the activity on the Jubilee, TEN and Sankofa fields. He advised companies to curtail emissions and eschew flaring while accelerating production to maximise opportunity while demand is high before we are made to transition into a green economy. In his closing remarks, he hinted that there was a possibility for commercial use of compressed natural gas vehicles in the future and admonished Upstream operators to blend operations with green sources by expanding business into green energy. Hon Alan Kyeremanteng, Minister for Trade and Industry, in his address confirmed that there was no doubt in his mind about whether or not to de invest from Petroleum resources. He mentioned that it was a natural resource that has several benefits and employs many citizens. Speaking from his perspective as the minister for trade, he linked the upstream operations to downstream industries such as plastics, cosmetics, transportation etc, indicating that de investing has major effect on all these industries which contribute immensely to Ghana’s economy. He advised key stakeholders to look at the data available and technologies involved in the transition to get a clearer sense of how long the process will take. He also advised companies to do an in-depth analysis of other countries’ experiences and distil lessons from them to use the experience in accelerating our own petroleum development. The Minister for Public Enterprises, Joseph Cudjoe, spoke about the external forces influencing the transition and how the nation should approach same. He mentioned that the impact on the energy transition had geopolitical and business influence. With his background in Energy as former deputy minister for Energy, he cited some challenges with the transition such as challenges with harnessing power from nuclear fission and fusion, difficulty in storing solar power etc, and concluded that there was a lot of opportunity to invest in the upstream sector today because the transition, even though imminent, will take some time to fully take shape.