He is alarmed that the country's old discoveries are depleting without replacement.

"Oil companies that have acquired contracts to discover oil are mostly mushroom companies and they do not have adequate capital and capacity to do so," he said at the launch of a report dubbed: "" in Accra. "And so we are currently depleting reserves from the old discoveries without replacing them."

He continued: "In fact, some of these companies have never gone to site ever since they were contracted."

Adam said the inability to explore new discoveries is a "worrying situation" since future "production and revenues depend on the new discoveries that we make today."