Ghana must renew its oil and gas industry while responding to climate policy, carbon management, changing investor expectations and technological advances reshaping the global energy market, Energy and Green Transition Minister Dr John Jinapor has said.
Speaking at the annual general meeting of the Ghana National Petroleum Corporation (GNPC), Dr Jinapor said the country’s petroleum sector was operating in a rapidly changing energy landscape and needed a carefully managed response.
He said Ghana should neither abandon its petroleum resources abruptly nor continue with the sector without adapting to new economic and environmental realities.
“Our policy is to ensure a responsible and orderly energy transition in which oil and gas continue to support economic development while Ghana simultaneously expands renewable energy, improves energy efficiency, strengthens environmental governance and develops credible ESG and carbon-accounting systems. GNPC must therefore incorporate climate and transition risks into investment decisions, strengthen emissions management and ensure that new petroleum investments remain economically and environmentally responsible.
“Governance, transparency and institutional accountability will remain central to Government’s expectations of GNPC. The Corporation’s recognition as one of seven highly compliant institutions among 101 public entities assessed under the Ministry of Finance’s Public Financial Management Compliance League is commendable. However, compliance must evolve into a culture of continuous improvement. GNPC must strengthen cybersecurity, procurement controls, project governance, HSSE systems, financial reporting and risk management,” he said.
Dr Jinapor said GNPC had faced a combination of mature-field decline, volatile crude oil prices, weak upstream investment, infrastructure limitations and liquidity pressures affecting Ghana’s domestic gas and power sectors during 2025.
Despite those difficulties, he said the corporation had produced an average of 102,199 barrels of crude oil per day. Gas exports reached 336 MMscf per day, exceeding the target of 325 MMscf per day, while profitability also improved significantly.
“Government welcomes these achievements,” he said, but added that the priority now had to move beyond resilience towards renewal, growth and long-term sustainability.
The minister identified declining production and dwindling reserves as the most urgent challenges facing Ghana’s upstream petroleum industry.
Jubilee, TEN and Sankofa Gye Nyame continue to provide the foundation of national petroleum output, but Dr Jinapor said the mature fields required more advanced reservoir management, enhanced recovery techniques, infill drilling and timely investment.
Ghana’s gross reserves fell from 860 MMboe in 2024 to 826 MMboe in 2025, while contingent resources also recorded a substantial decline. Although reserves remained above the government’s target, Dr Jinapor said the trend was not acceptable and stressed that each barrel extracted would increasingly need to be replaced with new reserves.
“We will therefore work with GNPC, the Petroleum Commission and industry operators to accelerate field development, appraisal and exploration, improve the pace of approvals, address infrastructure bottlenecks and create a more predictable investment environment. Our policy objective must be to move discovered resources into production faster while creating the conditions for new discoveries.
“Reserves replacement will require a deliberate shift in the way Ghana approaches exploration and upstream investment. GNPC’s focus on Pecan, Eban-Akoma, Afina, Pecan North, Almond and Beech, together with the Eban-Akoma Plan of Development, the amended TEN Plan of Development and near-field opportunities, is therefore strategically important.
“Government will support policies that facilitate the commercialisation of these resources while ensuring that national interests are protected. We must also examine innovative approaches to marginal and stranded resources, including production hubs and shared infrastructure. At the same time, exploration of frontier areas such as the Voltaian Basin should be pursued with technical discipline and appropriate risk management. Our objective is exploration capable of generating commercially viable reserves and sustainable production.”
Dr Jinapor said GNPC’s financial results for 2025 demonstrated that tighter commercial discipline could produce stronger outcomes even in difficult market conditions.
The corporation’s group profit after tax rose by 24.88% to US$374.99m, despite the average achieved crude oil price falling from US$81.15 per barrel to US$69.47 per barrel.
The government expects the improved performance to be sustained through careful capital allocation, strict cost controls, stronger management of projects and better revenue collection.
“GNPC must increasingly operate with the financial discipline expected of a commercially oriented national oil company while continuing to fulfil its strategic national mandate. This means that major investments must be subjected to rigorous commercial scrutiny, risks must be properly priced, and capital must be directed towards projects that can generate sustainable returns and strengthen national energy security.
“A policy priority is strengthening GNPC’s capacity as an operator and strategic commercial institution. Ghana cannot indefinitely depend on international operators for all aspects of upstream development while seeking to maximise national value creation. The strengthening of GNPC’s operatorship capability must therefore remain a strategic objective,” he said.
