Promises, prospects and need for partnerships in Ghana’s Petroleum Hub’s $60 billion Project
Ghana is strategically positioned, thanks to its geographic advantage, existing and growing infrastructure, political stability, and emerging petroleum assets, to create a fully integrated petroleum and petrochemical hub that meets Ghana’s domestic energy demands while serving as a major export node for West Africa and beyond.
Nigeria’s entrepreneur billionaire Aliko Dangote, by virtue of his exceptional financial muscle, is already implementing a strategic refinery that is for the storage, refining, and distribution of petrochemical products.
The Dangote Refinery is situated on a 6,180-acre (2,500-hectare) site within the Nigerian Lekki Free Trade Zone, with its operations beginning in January 2024 and designed to process a wide variety of crude oils, including African, Middle Eastern, and US light tight oil. At full operational capacity, the refinery processes 650,000 barrels of crude oil per day, producing Euro-V quality gasoline, diesel, aviation fuel, kerosene, and polypropylene.
His refinery’s daily output includes approximately 50 million liters of gasoline and 17 million liters of diesel, along with aviation fuel and other petrochemical products. The refinery has already reached full refining capacity as of February 2026 and significantly contributes to both domestic supply and exports across Africa and international markets.
His investment has been transformative on the continents landscape and already, a quick but comprehensive analysis of his investment and vision is indicative that, there is so much to learn, from the Dangote Refinery, as a country that seeks to take advantage of the varied opportunities in the fast growing and yet intensive capital demanding and volatile downstream industry.
In short, whereas Ghana intends to have what he has, our vision is somewhat, bigger than his in many ways and hence, the need for benefitting from his industry pioneering role. It must be emphasized that, Ghana’s ambition is not just to establish a world-class petroleum and petrochemical facility, but rather a hub or complex, that encompasses more.
Per African energy industry ratings, Nigeria and Côte d’Ivoire have advanced efforts to establish themselves as premier energy nodes, but Ghana’s political stability enduring and peace, pivotal geographic centrality, and investor-friendly business ecosystem strategically creates a multifaceted advantage, for our motherland Ghana, to literally take over, due to these enabling environment for energy enterprises to flourish.
Ghana’s existing oil and gas infrastructure is a fast fledging and robust springboard, which we can leverage on, for constructing these next-generation facilities, which would vault the nation into regional energy leadership.
Hence, the success of our Petroleum Hub project will be in its exceptional leadership, to seize strategic voids, still in West Africa’s energy landscape and cement its position as the sub-region’s leading energy hub and this largely hinges on majorly securing strong financial investments and scaling the usual land acquisition issues, which arises with the magnitude of such projects.
Since then President Akufo-Addo assented to the bill into law in 2020, up till now, the major hurdle around the formal and operational Petroleum Hub Development Corporation (PHDC) and the securing the land for the project, which primarily, is the surest foundation for ascertaining the future and financing prospects, are nearing completion, under the current leadership of Dr. Tony Aubyn and ably assisted by Mr. Onasis Rosely, Deputy CEO for Operations and Technical, and Halimatu Sadia Abdulai Abu, Deputy CEO for Finance and Administration.
At the heart of the Phase One of this entire project, is the legally efficient acquisition of the land approximating 5,000 hectares and the servicing of the land, undoubtedly one of its hardest challenges, which must be scaled so well by PHDC’s legal team currently, else class lawsuits, as the project makes progress, will cripple it all. With promises given by current leadership to the people who will be most affected and the compensation being negotiated, Ghana is assured of a successful take-off eventually then.
Month ending of April, the leadership of Petroleum Hub Development Corporation through a publication on its website, announced that, its Joint PHDC and Lands Commission team have officially concluded Community Engagement sessions in Jomoro and had also gone ahead with the presentation of the official gazette to the Municipal Chief Executive of Jomoro, as well as the chiefs and assembly members of each of the thirteen communities, most affected by this project.
Per the provisions of the Land Act, 2020 (Act 1036), which serves as the principal legislation governing compulsory land acquisition in Ghana, the presentation of the gazette to the affected communities is a critical legal procedure as part of the compulsory acquisition process. Hence, the Lands Commission was mandated by law to publish a Declaration of Intent for Acquisition and following this publication, the Lands Commission was required to officially inform the affected communities of the government’s intention to acquire their lands for this specific project, to make it ready for investors interested in setting up refineries, petrochemical plants, tank farms, and port facilities, etc.
Whereas there are some other challenges in the seemingly long haul to finalizing this rote, the challenge of bureaucracy can also be predicted and hence, the assurance from Dr Aubynn that, PHDC had initiated an inter-agency dialogue aimed at reducing bureaucratic bottlenecks and cutting down permit acquisition time from over 349 days to just one month, is commendable.
As part of a project I am leading, dubbed “Law and Leadership Colloquium,” where I had an opportunity to interview Mr. Rosely Onasis, as one of our distinguished speakers on the project, that seeks to expose law students to the broader natural resources industry, where he had passionately reiterated how PHDC are passionately working around models that will ensure that, Ghana takes advantage of the opportunities, this project offers us, in its strategic contribution to our developmental agenda and positioning Ghana, as industry leaders in the sub-region.
Already, the PHDC has indicated that, investors would enjoy several incentives, such as paying only 15 per cent corporate tax as compared to the general 25 per cent, also enjoy tax-free period during construction and a 10-year tax holiday to enable them to recoup their investments and these are vital, to attracting the needed $60 billion, which will make the Petroleum Hub’s on-ground project, feasible eventually.
Canada for instance has promised a commitment to the success of this project and most recently, following the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between the Petroleum Hub Development Corporation (PHDC) and Mannschaft Engineering and Infrastructure Systems, a Ghanaian firm, the project has indeed received a major boost and is indicative that, the investor markets, both locally and on the global scale, are willing to come on board.
The downstream sector is at a make-or-break moment, as population growth, industrialization and urbanization are pushing fuel and LPG demand to unprecedented levels and therefore, whereas the industry opportunity is immense, investors do not chase potential, they rather chase predictability.
Whereas Africa has plenty of the former while it is now steadily building the foundations for the latter, energy experts have unendingly asserted that, the Continents goals will remain theoretical unless the continent addresses regulatory fragmentation, infrastructure gaps and financing hurdles that continue to undermine investor confidence.
This why the smooth accompanying legal framework that established the PHDC and governs its operations, as well the practical and scalable productive models being adopted and implemented, will procure us a coherent ecosystem for leveraging Africa’s downstream industry, one where projects are structured, transparent, compliant and investment-ready.
By 2050, one in every four people on earth will live in Africa, hence Crude oil consumption in Africa is set to rise 4.5 million barrels by 2050 and this staggering demographic reality will either power prosperity or deepen dependence, in the face of generally stagnated downstream investment in our part of the world, despite growing upstream production.
In a globally renowned report by McKinsey Energy Insights, it predicts liquid demand in Europe and North America will shrink, while Asia and Africa will rather drive growth, as McKinsey’s Global Downstream Model includes three potential scenarios for future demand as Energy transition, Delayed transition and Accelerated transition.
Perhaps, the totality of the gains from all our sun-regional projects such as the efficient performance of the Tema Oil Refinery (TOR), the coming on board of the full scale Petroleum Hub project and the Dangote Refinery, will strategically help Africa win and hence, scale its seeming stagnating stuck, in the costly paradox of exporting crude and importing refined products at a premium.
A proven track record of delivering projects on time and within budget, continuous Capital flows, and fiscal discipline, bankability and maintaining market credibility is therefore our only choice, to turn Ghana and Africa’s downstream potential into real investment.
In concluding, PHDC’s mandate, as it makes laudable progress to see the actualization of its $60 billion Project must consistently assure the investor markets that, its commitment to stable regulation, enforceable contracts, credible technical and financial modelling, greenfield-emphasis (ESG compliance), that can unlock lower-cost capital projects, predictable feedstock and offtake arrangements, amongst others, are at the very core of its operations and that, it will give no calculated room for rather inconsistent policies, market fragmentation, etc.
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