John Mahama and the OCTP ENI/VITOL Sankofa Project

An Italian official who was a guest at the commissioning of the Offshore Cape Three Points (OCTP) spoke very highly of President Mahama and how he was key in making the OCTP happen. He recounted that when there was a deadlock in negotiations on the project also known as Sankofa field, President Mahama requested ENI/VITOL to send down their negotiators. He convened a meeting in his conference room with all the stakeholders. After receiving a briefing on the deadlock, he asked all of them to go pack their bags and go camp at Akosombo. He asked them not to come back to Accra until they had reached agreement.

In Akosombo all the stakeholders were assembled including the Ministry of Finance, World Bank and all the OCTP partners. After about 2 weeks of hard bargaining and negotiations, they returned to the Flagstaff House and announce that agreement had been reached.

Knowing how transformational OCTP was going to be for Ghana, Mahama was the moving spirit behind the realization of the OCTP project. He regretted that Ghana’s politics made it impossible for President Mahama to be present at the birth of this all important project he helped to midwife.

It is ironic that the Minority that sought to play politics with the project and embarrassed the Italian Prime Minister by claiming a collusion of fraud between ENI and the Mahama administration, are the Government today that has enjoyed the prestige of commissioning this all important project for Ghana.

The OCTP ENI/VITOL project is seen as one of the greatest transformational projects for Ghana. While it may not carry as much crude oil as Jubilee and the TEN field, it contains quantities of gas that have been committed for power production. The availability of this gas will wean Ghana’s dependence off the unpredictable West African Gas Pipeline Company.

Indeed the Reverse flow project that the Mahama administration began to work on, will bring any excess gas in the western enclave to feed the many stranded assets Ghana possesses in the East, such as Asogli and the Kpone Thermal Power Plant (KTPP).

The current administration has no option but to continue to pursue the blue print the Mahama administration laid down for turning Ghana into a hub for power production in West Africa. Interconnectivity of the power transmission grids of Ghana to all our neighbours means that excess power can be evacuated to Togo, Benin, Burkina Faso, Liberia Sierra Leone and even power starved Nigeria.

Ghanapoliticsonline.com