A former board chairman of the Ghana National Petroleum Corporation, Ato Ahwoi, has revealed conditions under which the United States consulate in Accra denied him a visa years ago.
He connected the incident to his refusal alongside two others to permit Kosmos Energy to continue with a US$4 billion offer of a stake in the Jubilee Oil Fields in an arrangement with American oil monster, Exxon Mobil.
He linked up the story of how himself, then Energy Minister, Oteng-Adjei and Charles Wereko Brobbey had fought off pressure from the Americans to sell the stake during a meeting in the United States.
“In 2010 or 11, a group and I went to the US to proceed to haggle with them on purchasing the shares of Kosmos. Kosmos needed to offer the shares to ExxonMobil, we said we wouldn’t sell to them.
“Myself, Oteng-Adjei and Charles Wereko Brobbey, we said we shouldn’t sell to them and our explanation was basic. ExxonMobil is large to such an extent that assuming you offer our little oil to them, which was assessed to be around 200,000 barrels each day, they would simply warehouse it,” he described.
He proceeded with that that meeting included then oil chief, Tillerson, who later turned into a Secretary of State under Trump’s administration, the meeting noted had finished unexpectedly before the designation got back to Ghana.
On the explanation that the designation would not sell the shares , he said: “On the grounds that they were managing 2 million to 10 million barrels per day. Thus, we said no – no – no, we can’t give it to these individuals, we will take it ourselves and see what we can do.
“I returned here, we should return in a month, then I understood that my US visa had lapsed. I applied, and afterward the Embassy staff said they had rejected me. I was bounced,” he told Nana Aba Anamoah of GHOne TV in an exclusive interview.
As per a 2010 report by the Wall Street Journal vis Dow Jones, the government of Ghana obstructed the assessed a $4 billion offer of a stake in a gigantic oil field, thwarting a very long time of talks between potential purchaser Exxon Mobil Corp. (XOM) and the stake’s proprietor, Kosmos Energy LLC.
The government blamed Dallas-based Kosmos for putting Ghana’s state-run oil organization out of conversations about the field’s turn of events and afterward imparting data about the field to expected purchasers without government consent. The government lately itself has explored for accomplices to work with Ghana’s oil company, including state-run China National Offshore Oil Corp, the report further stated .
It proceeded with that the then Energy Minister Joe Oteng-Adjei had expressed that the Ghana National Petroleum Corporation would be the main entity permitted to purchase the Kosmos stake in the alleged Jubilee field.