Border dispute doesn’t distract us – Kosmos

KOSMOS Energy Ghana says it is not distracted by the raging maritime border dispute between Ghana and neighbouring Cote d’Ivoire as it continues to develop some of its oil blocks in the disputed area.

The company said once the International Criminal Court (ICC) has not restrained Ghana and the oil exploration and production companies that she licensed from working on the area “then the place belongs to Ghana.”

The Communications Manager of Kosmos Ghana, Mrs Ruth Adashie, made these remarks in an interaction with some journalists in Accra.

Her interaction formed part of an oil, gas and mining (OGM) training programme for the journalists. The programme is an initiative of the Revenue Watch Institute (RWI) with Penplusbytes, an ICT journalism training institution, as the local partner.

Mrs Adashie said, the dispute “has not affected our work at all.”

If it had, she said “we would have laid down our tools and wait to see what government would say but that is not the case.

“Once the ICC has not put an injunction on Ghana, then what it means is that Ghana still owes that portion of the sea and we have no cause to worry,” she emphasised.

Cote d’Ivoire has been laying ownership claim to the billions of barrels of oil and cubic feet of gas reserves reportedly found in the deep waters near the coast of Ghana.

Although the border dispute had existed for a long time, it was reignited around 2010 – the year that Ghana made significant discoveries and also commenced commercial production of oil and gas within the disputed area and Jubilee Field respectively.

Seismic data from the Ghana National petroleum Corporation (GNPC), the regulator of the country’s upstream petroleum sector, currently show that the disputed area covers portions of the Jubilee Field, Tweneboa, Enyenra, the Owo discoveries, West Tano-1X find and the Deep water Tano Block, all found in the west coast of Ghana’s territorial waters.

GNPC had already allocated some of those blocks to some oil companies, including Kosmos, to explore and develop for commercial oil production.

Kosmos Energy’s largest stake in the country, the deep water Tano discovery, is located in the disputed area, according to Mrs Adashie.

Thus, with Cote d’Ivoire still pushing its ownership claim, indications were that oil exploration and production companies such as Kosmos that have blocks within the disputed area would be distracted from continuing to work on their blocks.

That is, however, not the case with Kosmos, said the company’s Communications Manager.

“To us at Kosmos, it is work as usual,” she said but admitted that it was the Ghana government that could say otherwise.

“Once government has not said anything, then we believe that the area is for Ghana,” she said.

Touching on the Jubilee Field where Kosmos is a partner, Mrs Adashie said her outfit was confident daily output would climb further after moving from 60,000 barrels per day (bpd) earlier this year to currently average at 83,000bpd.

Kosmos, she said was, however, not happy with the wide media publicity devoted to Tullow, the operator, on issues concerning the field.

“Tullow has been taking all the glory and the other partners are left in the dark,” she bemoaned, noting that “all we ask of is equal publicity be given to all of us.”