Loan deal to support petroleum storage expansion in Ghana

The deal, which was welcomed by Quantum Group executive chairman and chief executive officer Emmanuel Egyei-Mensah, is part of the IFC’s ongoing support for the development of the Tema Tank Farm, a 55,000 tonne petroleum products storage facility near the port of Tema, 29 kilometres east of Accra.

Egyei-Mensah said: “This collaboration with IFC on the Tema Tank Farm project is critical for us and for Ghana. IFC support to establish international best practices in corporate governance and environmental and social systems, throughout the Quantum Group, will position us for optimum performance as Ghana liberalises petroleum product pricing.”

IFC country manager for Ghana Ronke-Amoni Ogunsulire said: “The energy sector is a priority for IFC, and we are working on projects in every part of the value chain... the corporation is committed to partnering with local private sector players to build capacity and meet the growing energy needs of Ghanaians”.

The IFC said it has invested more than $2.4 billion in total in Ghana to date. In the past five years, investment in the energy sector amounted to $525m including oil and gas exploration and production, power production, and refined petroleum distribution, the IFC said.

The IFC's support has extended to Kosmos Energy, one of the key partners developing Ghana’s Jubilee field in deep water some 60km off Ghana’s coast. In addition, the corporation has signed a $115m loan agreement with British Tullow Oil.

Figures released by Kosmos Energy last August showed that gross production from the Jubilee field, which started up in 2010, averaged approximately 104,000 barrels of oil per day (bopd) in the second quarter of 2014, an increase from 102,000 bopd in the first quarter of the year.

In December 2010, the World Bank approved a credit of $38m to Ghana’s government, co-financed by the governments of Ghana and Norway, to implement an oil and gas capacity building project. The support, a concessional loan with a repayment period of 35 years, including a 10-year grace period, constituted two-thirds of the total cost of the project.

Draft legislation aimed at improving transparency and governance in the exploration and production of oil in Ghana was approved by the country’s cabinet last year.

A report released earlier this year by the Ghana Institute of Governance and Security, ‘Four Years of Oil Production in Ghana’, said the country received more than $2.7 billion in total revenue from the oil sector after four years of production activities under the country’s ‘modern concession system’. However, the report said the figure could have been around $6.4bn if the country had adopted production sharing agreements.