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Petroleum Commission must probe Tullow Ghana’s job cuts – Alex Mould

  • SOURCE: Citi Fm | qwesa2big
  • A former Chief Executive Officer of the Ghana National Petroleum Corporation, GNPC, Alex Mould, is asking the Petroleum commission to probe Tullow Ghana’s decision to lay off Ghanaian workers due to Tullow Oil Plc’s massive disappointments in operations Africa and South America.

    A fortnight ago, Tullow Ghana announced that it is cutting down its workforce in Ghana by 25 percent over challenges with oil productions among others.

    The ongoing global redundancy process will lead to the departure of 35 percent of Tullow Ghana’s senior leadership as well as overall 25 percent job losses for staff made up of both Ghanaians and expatriates.

    Speaking to Citi Business News, the former GNPC boss said the country’s leading oil producer’s troubles are largely from its global operations, adding that the Ghana operations should not have been affected.

    “Any business when you are cutting down costs, you will cut especially in the non-core areas. My concern is that why are they cutting down costs in their only revenue-generating fields which are in Ghana. Why are they also transferring most of the support services from Ghana to the UK?”

    “If you look at this critically, they are actually employing foreigners in the UK to do work Ghanaians should be doing here. I charge the Petroleum Commission to look at this very critically and have a conversation with Tullow.

    The General, Transport, Petroleum and Chemical Workers Union of the Trades Union Congress, had earlier called on government to take a second look at the local content policy for the oil and gas sector, to ensure that Ghanaians are protected from layoffs when production companies face operational challenges.

    Tullow restructuring

    The planned restructuring process, Bloomberg notes, is likely to lead to nearly 40 percent loss of the workforce in its Kenya operations as well as the shut of offices in Dublin, Ireland and Cape Town, South Africa.

    Ghana, being one of the key markets for the Anglo-Irish oil company, is going to be hit hard by the restructuring process.

    Tullow’s challenges bite Ghana

    Ghana’s petroleum revenues for 2019 fell by more than four percent according to provisional data released by the Bank of Ghana.

    The central bank’s data released earlier this week shows that the country recorded US$503.1 million from crude oil liftings, surface rentals and corporate taxes in the second half of 2019.

    The first half of the year also generated US$434 million bringing the total petroleum revenue received for last year to US$937.7 million.

    Last year’s revenue is four percent lower than the US$977.1 million the country received from its petroleum resources.

    The drop in petroleum revenues comes at a time the lead partners of Jubilee Fields, Tullow Oil, had to undergo a restructuring process amidst production challenges at Jubilee Fields and one of the wells at the Tweneboah-Enyerra-Ntomme (TEN) Fields.

    The challenges at Jubilee relate to re-injection of gas into the wells which the company stated had led to a 30 percent cut in production.

    At the TEN fields, a production well at Enyerra had to be suspended leading to a cut in production figures at TEN.

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