Are the communities ready for the oil?

With issues of sustainable development taking centre stage globally, especially in natural resource rich countries and companies rushing to ensure a holistic triple bottom line – which are people, planet and profit, one would have expected that, after Ghana joining the comity of oil producing nations, spatial planning would be the number one priority of districts within the oil enclave.

Instead, there are several examples of how the state agencies that are supposed to lead in ensuring that the right things are done rather condone illegalities and interspacing projects with residential facilities in these communities.

It all started in the Twin-City of Sekondi/Takoradi, where after the colourful announcement of the discovery of oil and gas off the coast of the Western Region, a number of companies flooded the metropolis.

Every single space in the metropolis was covered; and standard of living of the people of the regional capital skyrocketed. Rent, prices of goods and services, owing to the commercial declaration of the country’s oil and gas fortunes coupled with high expectations, all shot up.

The discovery of oil and gas in the region gave birth to all the services, which hitherto could only be found only in the national capital Accra, Tema or Kumasi.

Today, all the financial institutions including insurance companies have increased their presence in the twin-City of Sekondi/Takoradi. Good move though, but it came without a corresponding increase in the social and commercial infrastructure to contain the excess social flow.

Poor workers are ejected from their apartments and were rented to oil and gas companies or related oil and gas service providers or bankers for higher rent.

Areas hitherto marked for residential purposes and future extension of residential facilities and sensitive military installations were turned into storage areas for oil and gas because of ill planning.

After the commercial discovery of oil, Ghana was caught in the web of making sure that the first oil was poured, forgetting that if the country took time to plan for the oil and allowed the development process to travel between three to 10-years the country would have reaped more benefits than what it is gaining today.

What is needed?

With the discovery, as new oil nation, there is the need to ensure that the structures are in place, several tonnes of metals that are transported daily to support upstream operations are well stocked and movement of trucks are controlled.

All that required a designated shore-base facility for repair, transportation, storage, waste disposal and all the support services for the upstream sector for convenience. But in the case of Ghana, the focus was so much on getting revenue than planning for the future.

It is almost a decade now and the country is yet to boast of designated service bay for the upstream sector for the country’s oil find.

The truth about oil companies

The truth is that oil and gas industry players, do not establish permanent structures, therefore, a country like Ghana, it was not necessary to hasten to the next stage after the discovery was announced.

In Ghana, international oil companies, such as Tullow Oil, Kosmos Energy, HESS, Anadarko, ENI and many others do not own oilrigs, oil tankers, refineries as it is the case of global giants that formed the seven sisters.

In the industry, most offshore drilling vessels/platforms are designed to moved from one location to another, as the majority of exploratory wells drilled are failures or dry, therefore, it would not make sense to build a permanent structure at the start of a drilling campaign.

Some IOCs countries use variety of styles of temporary or rented structures to drill exploratory wells. They also use drilling companies with mobile offshore drilling units such as Transocean, Erikraud among others to explore for them.

To the oil companies, it is only when an oil reservoir is discovered, appraised to be commercially viable, and then assigned for development that they develop long term structures to support their operations.

Sustainability

Ghana after the commercial oil declaration also declared zero tolerance for flaring of associated natural gas and estimated at about five-trillion standard cubic fit of gas, therefore, the managers of the economy promised to monetise the gas.

Though the onshore gas processing plant was delayed, it has come up and it is now operating almost full capacity.

Interestingly, the facilities for the monetisation of the gas is currently sited in an area, which has not been planned, therefore, the dangerous onshore gas facilities are interspaced with communities.

In the southern part of the Western Region, Ellembelle is the first processing plant, which has sandwich a community such as Anochi, with the loading gantries of Quantum and Ghana National Gas Company (Ghana Gas).

The 111km gas pipeline from Atuabo to Aboadze span hundreds of communities through eight districts. Next to it is the ENI-Sankofa gas project and back to Atuabo Free Port facility.