Split decision on who wins Jubilee field

Were Ghana’s dispute with big oil a boxing match it would be approaching round nine, with the fighters punch-drunk and the judges undecided.

The sparring began early last year as a result of bad chemistry between Texan wildcat company Kosmos and the newly formed government of President John Evans Atta Mills.

But the real blows only started to land when Kosmos announced a year ago that it was selling its stake in the huge offshore Jubilee field to ExxonMobil for $4bn, before it had sought approval from the government.

At the time, Ghana was preparing its own bid via the state oil company, Ghana National Petroleum Corporation, which was less than happy to be caught unawares.

The dispute has evolved since into an acrimonious punch-up, with geostrategic implications for the US and China and a bearing on the future of Ghana’s fledgling democracy.

Other newcomers to the oil industry in Africa such as Uganda have had a somewhat easier time. But with local expectations of what oil could do for the country’s development and international interest high, Ghana’s experience reveals how fraught it can be for African countries to assert their interests as global competition for energy resources intensifies.

In theory, the country which emerged as a star reformer after a decade of coups and turmoil in the 1970s, should be well placed to avoid the pitfalls that have made other African oil economies dependent on volatile world prices and prey to corrupt elites.

In practice, the speed with which Ghana is moving from discovery to production is testing the country’s institutional and regulatory capacity.

A confluence of venomous local politics and hard-headed commercial considerations have made for a bumpy ride.

For the US private equity backers of Kosmos, Warburg Pincus and Blackstone, who stood to gain at least a fourfold profit on their investment, the ExxonMobil deal looked sweet.

Moreover, ExxonMobil is as qualified as any oil major to drill in deep water, and has ample resources to develop Ghana’s potential.

But the Ghana government had a host of concerns. For much of the past year, it dug its heels in, declining approval.

This was partly because it wants to control who partners in a venture that could make or mar the country’s fortunes, and partly because of the way in which the deal came about.

From the point of view of GNPC officials, the agreement appeared to “subordinate Ghanaian law governing a strategic national resource to a private contract made between two US companies.”

The ensuing battle has only served to confirm the view among some state officials, that a US oil major of ExxonMobil’s size would ride roughshod over the country’s concerns.

Ghana’s reputation in the US has taken a battering from Washington lobbyists and negative publicity in parts of the media, which have presented Ghana as attempting to force a sale at below market value to the state oil company.

A senior Ghanaian official comments: “The thing for some of us in terms of the development of the country is that, if you have one behemoth out there, everything would be done according to its whims. And if you don’t do it their way the whole American system comes down on you.”

Last month, ExxonMobil walked away from its “exclusive and binding” agreement with Kosmos. But the fight is not over yet.

Some officials close to President Mills, are wary of antagonising Washington and are still open to overtures from ExxonMobil.

An alternative under consideration is for the GNPC to put in its own bid, financed with Chinese money. It would then split the Kosmos 23.5 per cent stake in Jubilee between China’s CNOOC and another oil major with deep water expertise.

The Jubilee field, which may hold at least 1.2bn barrels of oil, has also attracted interest from Korean, French, British and Norwegian companies.

“Politically, I don’t think we can continue with a buffeting from left and right. We have to show some decisiveness and move on,” says an official close to President Mills.

While polemics around control of the oil have presented Ghana in a bad light, the news from offshore, where oil companies are preparing to begin production before the end of the year, has mostly been good.

A fresh discovery by Britain’s Tullow Oil, announced in July, could as much as double reserves discovered to date, reinforcing indications that Ghana is set to become a significant producer.

That the oil is a convenient boat ride across the Atlantic from one of the world’s largest consumers only serves to heighten the country’s allure.

But like other African countries, Ghana faces a delicate task meeting international expectations, as Washington seeks to consolidate its influence, European companies fight to maintain a grip, and China is banging at the door.