<<Print>>

The Competence of the Energy Minister, Emmanuel Armah Kofi Buah, to navigate the country through the highly sensitive oil and gas industry, and his capacity to bring on board new innovations to solve the ailing energy situation in the country, has been questioned by many energy experts. Currently, there are fears that oil companies seeking to raise funds from the capital market to finance oil infrastructure in Ghana may have to contend with skepticism, with respect to the genuineness of letters from the Ministry of Energy to their financiers, due to a signature forgery scandal that has rocked the Ministry lately. Muira Petroleum Company, a Ghanaian subsidiary of Gondwana Oil Corporation, a listed Canadian oil company, and Ghana�s Energy Ministry are shifting responsibility over an alleged forgery of the Minister�s signature used for the acquisition of an oil block in Ghana�s oil fields. While the Minister of Energy is pointing accusing fingers at Muira for wrongdoing, the company at the center of the controversy insists it has done nothing wrong �There has been no wrongdoing by Miura or its directors, and the company has not indulged in any out of the normal business practice,� the directors of Muira have insisted. The Executive Secretary of the Africa Center for Energy, Amin Adams, says the development has dented Ghana�s image as a destination for oil investment. He has called on the President, John Dramani Mahama, to, as a matter of urgency, constitute an independent investigative body to bring finality to the matter, to reassure the investment community that Ghana is not �a place to gamble, when it comes to our oil industry.� An industry person close to The Chronicle, however, argues that the issue of the forgery, though condemnable, has been blown out of proportion, and that any company or institution worth its salt in the oil and finance industry would want to do due diligence before accepting any deal. He blamed the Minister of Energy for the poor handling of the matter. But, Amin Adams insists that Ghana�s oil industry is too young to begin showing signs of the key pointers to the grand corruption that has bedeviled other oil producing countries on the African continent. �We are still a young industry; we have a lot of work to do to develop the industry; if at the inception of the industry we are facing such problems, how do we sustain the interest of the investor community in our industry?� he told The Chronicle in an interview . The Ministry of Energy says it is investigating the matter, but Mr. Adams is of the opinion that the ministry is deeply involved, and must not be allowed to investigate itself. �The ministry cannot investigate itself because there appear to be complicity involving the ministry, �he said. According to Mr. Adams, Ghana seems not to have learnt anything from the pitfalls from neighboring Nigeria, where the oil find tells a sorry story of corruption and civil strife.