Total petroleum revenues for the first nine months of the year increased by 59.8% year-on-year, despite a decline in total crude production by 19.2% year-on-year in the Jubilee, TEN and Sankofa Fields.

This is attributed to the favourable prices of crude oil recorded throughout the year. Specifically, “a higher average achieved crude oil price of $65.47, compared to $44.19 for the same period in 2020,” according to the 2022 Budget Statement.

The oil price rally reached multi-year highs of roughly $85 per barrel compared to expected average crude oil price of $50 per barrel for 2021 by market forecasters.

Petroleum Receipts from three fields increase

In the period under review, petroleum receipts reached $618.46 million (GH¢3,627.47 million) compared with total receipts of $387 million (GH¢2,151.58 million) from January-September, 2021. While total crude production reached 41.53 million barrels compared with 51.43 million barrels in 2020.

Total oil receipts from the Jubilee field was $240.85 million, an amount of $128.72 million from the TEN field, and $127.30 million from the SGN field.

The Carried and Participating Interest from these fields contributed the highest (53.5%) to total petroleum receipts for the period, followed by Royalties (26.9%), and Corporate Income Tax (19.5%). The rest of taxes collected from oil companies operating in these fields including Surface Rental contributed 0.13 percent to petroleum receipts for the period.

Following the allocation of oil revenues as stipulated in the PRMA Act 2015 Amended (Act 893), a total of US$161.51 million was allocated to GNPC during the period under reveiew, made up of Equity Financing Cost of US$110.03 million and GNPC’s share of the net Carried and Participating Interest of US$51.48 million.

According to the government’s mid-year oil projection, petroleum receipts are expected to rise from $1,006.14 million in 2022 to $1,017.19 million in 2025, despite the fact that some market watchers anticipate a sharp decline in oil revenues due to the growing decline in oil investments.

Crude Oil Output decline

Total crude oil output from the three oil fields saw Greater Jubilee output reach 19.94 million barrels, Tweneboa-Enyenra-Ntomme (TEN) registered 9.48 million barrels, and Sankofa-Gye Nyame (SGN) was 12.12 million barrels, representing 48.0 percent, 22.8 percent, and 29.2 percent of the total output, respectively.

Out of the total crude oil produced within the period under review, crude oil liftings made by the Ghana National Petroleum Corporation (GNPC) totaled 7.59 million barrels. Liftings from the Jubilee field was 3.84 million barrels, 1.89 million barrels from TEN field and 1.85 million barrels from SGN field.

The reduction in crude oil production is because of the adverse impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on upstream operations in 2020 which caused the Greater Jubilee and TEN Fields approved work programme for 2020 to be deferred to 2021.

Meanwhile, the decline in oil production is expected to prolong into 2022, due to similar conditions impeding output for this year; Covid-related delays in work programs and other upstream activities, according to Albert Longdon-Nyewan, head of production at GNPC.

However, with multiple well drilling underway by at least five or six wells in the coming year, production will rebound to 2020 levels in 2023, Longdon-Nyewan said.