Kosmos Won't Face Charges Over Jubilee

Kosmos Energy LLC said it settled a dispute with the government of Ghana over the country’s offshore Jubilee oil field and will not face criminal charges from the West African nation’s Justice Ministry.

Kosmos, which is backed by private-equity firms Blackstone Group LP and Warburg Pincus LLP, also said it reached an agreement with Ghana’s environmental authorities over discharges of drilling mud offshore.

Dallas-based Kosmos, the state-owned Ghana National Petroleum Corp. and Ghana’s Energy Ministry have all agreed to “amicably resolve several issues that have existed among them,” according to a company statement.

Kosmos had clashed repeatedly with the government of President John Atta Mills, which accused Kosmos of illegally sharing data about the field with foreign companies including Exxon Mobil Corp. Production from Jubilee, which is estimated to hold about 800 million barrels of crude, began last week.

The company did not specify terms of the agreement or say whether it included a financial payout. The statement said Kosmos had agreed to help Ghana’s environmental authorities “build capacity in the environmental sector” as part of the resolution over the drilling mud spill.

George Sarpong, a spokesman for Kosmos, said he was in a meeting and could not immediately comment on the agreement when reached on his mobile telephone today. Edward Bawa, a spokesman for Ghana’s Energy Ministry, declined to comment when reached by phone today at his office. Nana Boakye Asafu-Ajaye, managing director of GNPC, did not answer three calls placed to his mobile phone.

Blocked Attempt

Ghana blocked Kosmos’s attempt to sell its 23.5 percent interest in Jubilee to Exxon last year for $4 billion. Kosmos rejected a $5 billion bid for its stake from GNPC and China’s Cnooc Ltd., the Wall Street Journal reported Nov. 2, citing Gabriel Osatey, a geophysicist with the company.

Along with the U.S. Justice Department, Ghana’s attorney general launched a probe into Kosmos’s relationship with EO Group.

The U.S. closed its Foreign Corrupt Practices Act investigation of Kosmos in May without pressing charges. Ghana’s attorney general has also agreed not to press charges against Kosmos as part of today’s settlement, the statement said.

A Ghanaian government report earlier this year recommended fining Kosmos 40 million cedis ($27.3 million) for spilling 706 barrels of oil-based mud containing heavy metals and drilling fluid into the Gulf of Guinea on three occasions over the past year.

Today’s agreement also resolved issues surrounding Kosmos’s debt facility and corporate structure, the Kosmos statement said.