The Ministry of Energy has started approval processes for the sale of the Ghana operations of Anadarko Petroleum Corporation, one of the country’s oil production partners, to the French oil giant, TOTAL SA.

This follows the sale of Anadarko’s operations in four African countries — Algeria, South Africa, Mozambique and Ghana — to TOTAL SA, an upstream exploration and production company, for $8.8 billion last year.

A Deputy Minister of Energy in charge of Petroleum, Mohammed Amin Adam, has confirmed
Anadarko has been operating in the country since 2006, and until the sale of its operations last year, it owned 24.077 per cent of the Jubilee Field, which is Ghana’s first oil field, and 17 per cent of the Tweneboah-Enyera-Ntomme (TEN) project, an integrated oil and gas project.

According to two sources at the Ministry of Finance and the Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA), the gains accruing from Anadarko’s operations in the Jubilee Field and the TEN project prior to the sale amounted to $4.4 billion. They said the estimated value of $4.4 billion translated into a daily gain of about $1 million for the period that Anadarko had been in operation in Ghana.

On how much Anadarko would gain from the transaction, the sources concurred that a further assessment of the transaction showed that Anadarko could make a gain of about $2.5 billion.
with regard to the approval of the sale, the deputy minister said the government would give its blessings to the transaction only after Anadarko, which is the company selling, had complied with all the requirements

Asked what the ministry required before it could approve the transaction, Mohammed Adam said Anadarko was supposed to furnish the ministry with 12 separate documents.
He said the company had so far complied with virtually everything, except a tax clearance certificate, adding that the ministry was aware that Anadarko was currently engaging with the GRA to acquire the tax certificate.

On the granting of approval for TOTAL SA to enter the country, he said TOTAL SA was only required to comply with “basic requirements”, including providing the ministry with its certificate of incorporation and audited accounts.

Giving the history behind the transaction, Amin Adam explained that last year Occidental Petroleum, an American petroleum company, acquired the global operations of Anadarko.

He said as part of the agreement to acquire Anadarko, Occidental agreed to sell Anadarko’s operations in Africa to TOTAL SA, a transaction which he said was effected around the middle of last year.

He said it was through that African transaction that Anadarko’s operations in Ghana’s two premier oil projects were also affected.
Status of TOTAL SA

Mohammed Adam said although Anadarko was yet to satisfy all the requirements necessary for the transaction to be consummated, the ministry was excited about the entry of TOTAL SA into the oil sector in Ghana, given its size, clout and experience in the industry.

In its 2018 annual report, the Paris-based TOTAL SA reported revenue of $209.4 billion.
In the case of TOTAL, the Deputy Energy Minister said although its route of entry might not allow it to make fresh investments, it could end up acquiring a new block after getting used to the Ghanaian petroleum environment.