Who can compete with GNPC’s Kahuna to drive me more nervous?

Read Time: 6 minutes

I have followed a series of interviews granted by Dr KK Sarpong and sometimes froze,
literally, in complete disbelief of what damage he is doing to the country in an attempt to
litter the media space with hate for CSOs. By design or not, he injects extreme nervousness
than I have seen. The strategy was evident; he pontificates his achievements in public life to
sedate the minds of Ghanaians to think that he is doing the right thing with the Aker
transaction. He tries hard to discredit CSOs in the crudest way possible so the public will
listen to him, not the CSOs. Additionally, he displays an unpardonable lack of control over
the Aker transaction, which makes his amnesia of the history of Aker/AGM in Ghana almost
forgivable.
For the avoidance of doubt, CSOs have deliberately abstained from personalising this
transaction, but we are capable of descending that lane. On Peace FM, Dr Sarpong claimed
an outstanding achievement of consigning Ghana Cocoa Board (Cocobod) to a debt
procuring enterprise for almost three decades. He owned the idea to syndicate loans to
purchase cocoa beans, a practice that has escalated from borrowing hundreds of millions in
the 1990s to billions today. Dr Sarpong should note that CSOs will not celebrate his legacy of
debt procurement instead of building capital for the trade of a commodity that Ghana
continues to play a dominant role in the global supply market.

It is even shocking that the GNPC Kahuna goes way back into time to account for his public
life with such surgical precision on what he thinks is public worthy. I would have thought
that the most relevant and recent context of his public life to the ongoing Aker transaction is
his stewardship of Tema Oil Refinery (TOR). TOR was handed to Dr Sarpong with total debt
of about $400 million. At the time, the State needed a genius to save the company. Not only
that, the public was billed, through the TOR Debt Recovery Levy, to support Dr Sarpong to
turn the company’s fortunes around. Instead, he left the company with debt of over $1.4
billion, having received about $580m from the levy. In 2015, a government committee, with
the Bureau of National Investigations (BNI) and KPMG, recommended further investigation
into the debt and use of funds at TOR. However, as vulnerable as the Ghanaian public is, he
gets rewarded with a more significant portfolio in GNPC.

Here again, his stewardship of the Corporation thus far remains a template of “how not to run
a national oil company,” which will remain a subject of academic scrutiny for so long. He
frustrated ExxonMobil on the selections of a local partner for one whole year, creating
inactivity on Exxon’s block until Government compromised on Goil. Under his watch, the
Government has paid about $260 million for unutilised domestic gas and flared about
$200million worth of gas in 2020 alone. At the same time, Dr Sarpong spends his time
negotiating the import of LNG at an additional cost of about $300 million a year to the public
on a take-or-pay contract, ignoring the warnings of IMF on the fiscal consequences in its
article IV report for 2021. He demonises existing investors with his kitchen engineers, then
comes out in the open crying about exiting investors and blaming energy transition. Aker’s
jackpot is only one of many bad judgements of GNPC under his leadership.

To avoid public scrutiny of the Aker transaction, the Kahuna of GNPC spends time
bastardising CSOs and craftily portraying that we lack knowledge of the entire transaction.
However, it gets too apparent that if he paid little attention to CSOs, some of the nervy
moments in his interviews, which I will return to shortly, would have been avoided. On the
point of lack of knowledge, he got worryingly deflated by Bernard Avle on some of the
specific questions CSOs have raised. His last bullet, though, appears a push for an unfounded
twist of imperialist agenda, operated through CSOs, to disrupt what he wants to do with the
transaction.

In that effort, the Natural Resource Governance Institute (NRGI) has not been spared. He
endorses media distortions of anti-Ghana characterisation of CSOs and wages psychological
warfare to brand NRGI as a foreign entity interfering with domestic affairs. We are used to
this old tactic. It will not deter CSOs who do not hide their collaborators and source of funds
from the State. When it suits the Kahuna, CSOs are the last harbour of imperialists in the
affairs of the State. With that posturing, you would assume that GNPC will go to Amantin
Rural Bank to borrow the amount they need to buy out Aker or the GNPC boss will take
steps to remedy some colonial mindset embedded in his terms of employment; “The Chief
Executive will be entitled to a thorough medical examination once a year overseas and costs
shall be borne by the Corporation”. It will make every sense for him to start patronising
Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital if, indeed, he is anti-imperialism.

This imperialist claim even gets abject to note that when CSOs issued a press statement, the
GNPC sent responses to the Norwegian Government, IMF and World Bank without copying
the CSO who issued the statement. What can be worse than serving imperialists than this?
The partners who support CSOs have seen the unwillingness of leadership to develop the
country. That is why they encourage citizen participation in policymaking and development
planning. So, when we call them development partners, let us not be hypocritical about it.
They know us. We have been borrowing from them for years, a practice Dr Sarpong
celebrates for perpetuating at Cocobod.

The most worrying part of Dr Sarpong’s public commentary is his extreme lack of control
over the transaction he champions. It could be deliberate, but the accompanying risk for
Ghana is chilling. He appears more as a spokesperson for Aker than GNPC, defending and
changing numbers to make Aker look good. The following highlights are, for me, troubling.

1. Dr Sarpong says he is not aware of Aker looking to sell its assets without success.
   This is not just unbelievable; it portrays a lack of attention to detail in his bid to shortchange the public. If GNPC did any due diligence on why Aker wanted to sell, they
   would have chanced on online publications and direct quotes from the CEO of Aker
   Energy that they were looking for investors, including a possible sale of stakes to the
   market. That would have helped GNPC to investigate why they failed to get any
   buyer.
2. Dr Sarpong doesn’t have control over the few numbers involved in this transaction.
   His struggle to remember what is informing the transactions only leaves him accusing
   CSOs of ignorance. All of a sudden, he is putting out new numbers different from
   what he presented to Parliament. He told Parliament that the total cost incurred by
   Aker is $800 million; this included an ambiguous $280 million described as money
   spent on other activities. Now Dr Sarpong is quoting $399.2 million as the total cost
   incurred. It appears we are now making progress in the attempt to clean the
   transaction. Perhaps the more heat he gets, the lower the numbers for Ghana.
3. Dr Sarpong insists that Lambert certified the reserves of the field to inform the
   commercial valuation. However, Lambert told CSOs that they could not have done
   that in two weeks. Their job was to use the information provided by Aker. It does
   appear that Dr Sarpong does not understand the questions being asked. CSOs want to
   know whether an independent audit of the reserves was carried out to inform the
   commercial valuation or GNPC just accepted the numbers provided by Aker.
4. It is also shocking that Dr Sarpong claims that Nyankom discovery does not need an
   appraisal before buying it. According to him, all discoveries appraised in Ghana have
   yielded more reserves than initially estimated. What a statement from the boss of
   GNPC! I hope he was not speaking the language of GNPC engineers, but just street
   talk! CSOs will demand more than street talk.
5. Dr Sarpong sat on live TV to tell the world that Springfield’s Discovery is not ready,
   and more work is required. After convincing the Government to sanction the
   unitisation of OCTP and Springfield blocks, for which Eni has just sued Ghana, how
   does the Kahuna make such a U-turn as if he’s on a roller-coaster? And what will be
   his defence in court when invited? Ghana deserves better; it can’t be much more
   apparent.
   As a civil society, we are happy to remain civil if Dr Sarpong will choose that route.
   However, the fundamental questions we have asked remain unanswered. Rather than shadow
   boxing, GNPC should come to the public arena to debate the issues. It is time for the section
   of the Corporation pushing this transaction to realise that the diversionary tactics are
   crumbling, and the truth is triumphing. Aker Energy has sold deliberate lies to Ghana since it
   entered the country in 2018. Norwegian investors set up the company in January 2018 to
   acquire Hess’ interest in the Deep-Water Tano/ Cape Three Point (DWT/CTP). Since then
   Government has projected the company as an experienced offshore company capable of
   turning the industry’s fortunes around. However, the reality stares us in the face that Aker
   cannot do what it promised. A company that has not produced a litre of oil before cannot
   promise the almost forty-year-old GNPC tutelage. Ghana should be smarter than that.
   Benjamin Boakye
   Executive Director
   ACEP