In most of Africa, the industry has been surrounded by political interferences and mafia games due to its lucrative nature. The sadness of this situation is the fact that poor people are always at the receiving end of the misappropriation of petroleum resources. In house in the country, we have witnessed so many upheavals in the Petroleum industry starting with the Muhamed Bazzi case, Gam Petroleum case, the current Russian oil import case and the hidden licensing of petroleum exploration to foreign companies and the unclear picture about whether the country’s offshore oil reserves has been smuggled by a neighboring country.
It is hoped that the authorities will clear the air on the pending questions associated with the various reports in the media concerning the sector. It is a national responsibility for the Ministry of Energy and Petroleum to dig into the facts about the public outcry on issues of concern in the petroleum industry. Prominent among the issues, is the case between the African Petroleum company of Frank Timis and the government, the license issued to BP and the company’s withdrawal from oil block A1 which was supposed to hold billions of barrels of oil, the ‘lucrative portion of our offshore oil potential near the borderline between where Senegal discovered Sangamar wells and our territorial waters’.
This area has been under intelligence and economic surveillance by concerned operators in the oil industry for sometime. Whether true or not, it has been speculated that pipes might have been installed in our waters to drain our portion of oil reserves into the other wells outside the borderline. Some speculations said the area might have been annexed to the other side of the border line.
These speculations must be cleared by the Petroleum Ministry so that public anxieties about the handling of the country’s oil potential are put to rest. Gambians cannot be convinced that we have no oil resources when the country is surrounded by countries that discovered oil. It will certainly be geologically unsound. All the revelations from the interview granted by the Minister of Energy and Petroleum Affairs in response to public inquiries on the petroleum exploration activities, have not been satisfactorily received by the public according to the reactions in the media.
The public would like to know what sort of agreement was reached between the government and African Petroleum on the out of arbitration court settlement that was agreed upon. Why was BP given a license for block A1 if there were no oil deposits in the area. The details of the contract between BP and the government should be known to the public for the sake of transparency and accountability.
It is not just enough to announce that BP had fulfilled its contractual obligations to the government and paid off a certain amount to the State. What is the state of oil blocks A2, A3, A4, A5 in the scheme of things. These are all pertinent questions to be answered if the Ministry had acted in good faith on the petroleum sector activities. These petroleum industry matters have been so much captured in the media that they will constitute hearings when the Day of Reckoning dawns on the country. In this regard, we should be reminded of the State sponsored Commissions of Jammeh and even this government. The ball is therefore, in the court of the Ministry of Petroleum Affairs to clear the air now rather than later as the public continues to wait for answers to the whole ongoing petroleum saga in the country. Those who fail to comprehend the themes of the times in which we live, will be carried along in the wake of change. We can pay heed to this or leave it.
