Govt records GH₵1 billion oil revenue due to strategic mobilisation

The platform, developed by Strategic Mobilisation Ghana, was used monitor petroleum products across 16 depots in the country.

This helped Government to realize more money while reducing leakages in the fuel-value chain.

In a news conference in Accra, the Managing Director, Christian Sottie said when SML started monitoring and auditing, the volumes increased drastically even though “We were in a COVID-19 era where many factories were not operating at full capacity, borders were closed, and people were home.”

Mr Sottie revealed that SML’s data readings for June to December 2020 matched with those of the National Petroleum Authority (NPA) adding “These attest to the fact that SML’s readings are reliable and could be depended on for the revenue assurance process.”

Matthew Opoku Prempeh, Energy Minister Pulse Ghana

He added that the deployed non-intrusive system of fixing clamp-on meter on the pipes recorded the volume of fuel passing through the pipes via ultra-sonic waves, and transmitted the information to SML data centre.

“We do an end-to-end audit of volumes recorded at our data center. When someone touches our clamp-on at any depot nationwide, we get an alarm at the data centre and send our engineers to check immediately”, he added.

Prior to the introduction of SML, leakages were as a result of the diversion of petroleum products for re-export back to the domestic market and also the under-declaration of the volumes lifted for the domestic market.

An analysis of the National Petroleum Authority (NPA) and data from SML on petrol, LPG and diesel supplies showed a year-on-year disparity in the volumes accounted for.

Launching the SML in March 2020, the Minister of Finance, Ken Ofori-Atta said the NPA, Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA) and the depots’ independent reconciliation of reported sales of gasoil and gasoline for 2016 to 2018 showed differing figures.