Mr. Mould added that under this particular deal, government is exempted from any initial costs until production commences, unlike government’s initial deal in the Jubilee Fields, where Ghana spent as much as 4 billion dollars in the pre-development stage.
This has drawn some criticisms from analysts who say Ghana’s stake in the Ten Field is too small and a rip off.
Chief Executive Officer of the GNPC, Alex Mould has, however, refuted the claims, maintaining that the deal was brokered on purely economic and financial grounds.
“I think we are getting a fair deal, Jubilee was our first field, so every single petroleum agreement that have been signed there after, there’s an improvement,” he said.
Tullow Oil Ghana are the lead partners in the TEN project with 47.1%, Kosmos Energy holds 17.0%, while PetroSA holds 3.8% stake.
“There has been an improvement in the initial interest which is what we call the carry. We are carried. We don’t pay till production. And then we also have a participating interest where we actually pay for it once the development begins,” he said.
“We spent almost about a billion dollars in pre-development and we spent about 3 billion dollars in development of this field. So a total cost of 4 billion dollars was carried for most of it,” he added in an interview with Accra-based Citi FM.
Mr. Mould urged critics to concentrate on other parts of the deal, like the country’s gain on every barrel sold, as government’s continued benefit from the project would be in interests, revenue, carried interests, participating interest and corporate taxes in the production chain.