Accra, Aug 2, GNA – The Convention People’s Party (CPP) has appealed to President John Atta Mills to assist the Ghana National Petroleum Corporation (GNPC) to purchase Kosmos stake in the Jubilee Oil Field and its determination to achieve extensive deepwater capacity in the near future.
“With GNPC as the shareholder all Ghanaians have the possibility of being shareholders in the future. This would be a scheme of singular boldness and great magnitude,” the party said in an open letter to the President.
Mr Ivor Greenstreet, the General Secretary of the CPP, signed the letter.
The letter said it would not be easy for this objective to be achieved because “Kosmos is a powerful, all pervasive, devious and determined enterprise accountable to no one except a handful of arrogant directors mercilessly trying to destroy all who stand in their way.”
It said this is demonstrated by the infringement of GNPC’s data ownership rights, the current diversionary tactics concerning Mr Tsatsu Tsikata, a former GNPC Chief Executive, Stratoil and Modec and the original Kosmos Petroleum agreement signed in respect of Cape Three Points which “inexplicably gives Ghana billions of dollars less than other agreements such as Tullow’s Deep Water Tano Block immediately to the west.”
The letter said the success stories of Statoil in Norway and Petrobras in Brazil represented the aspirations of GNPC as a model for managing Ghana’s natural resources.
Statoil ASA, founded in 1972 is owned by the Government of Norway. The political motivation was Norwegian participation in the oil industry and to build up Norwegian competency within the petroleum industry and establish the foundations of a domestic petroleum industry.
It said with determination Norway achieved its goal. Despite mergers and changes over the years as well as being listed on the Oslo and New York Stock Exchanges the Norwegian government still owns 62.5% of the company and Statoil is Norway’s largest company employing over 25,000 people.
The Brazilian company, Petrobras, was created in 1953 has total assets of $133.5 billion.
According to Fortune 500 Petrobras is the 34th largest company in the world and yet the Brazilian government owns 55.7% of Petrobras common shares.
The letter said the stories of Statoil and Petrobras showed that it is critical from a national interest perspective that GNPC is given maximum support to develop similar capacity.
The CPP told the President that his is the glorious opportunity to lay the foundation to guide the nation to a gilded age of unparalleled prosperity.
“Deliverance of the economic kingdom for a Better Ghana lies squarely in your lap. We have muffled numerous opportunities to attain great wealth as a nation perhaps because of not playing the trump card at the right time. The right trump card at this time is the ‘Back GNPC Card.'”
Source: GhanaWeb
