New Ghana oil law heads for parliament


A recent report by the Ministry of Finance indicates that the new Exploration and Production Bill has been submitted to the Attorney General for final comments and will be put to parliament in the near future. The law, whose drafting began in 2010, aims to provide a comprehensive legal framework for the oil and gas industry to replace the 1984 law, creating a new regulator and transforming Ghana National Petroleum Corporation (GNPC) into a commercial entity. The slow pace of drafting has been criticised because the new regulatory framework comes more than two years after Ghana started to produce oil.