Despite having numerous legal provisions and industry reports all aimed at deepening transparency in the oil and gas sector, these are yet to lead to any meaningful accountability.
It does appear that not much has been done to demand accountability in the oil and gas sector.
Ghana, since the discovery and commercial production of oil, has made elaborate provisions for disclosure – with the notion that once there is transparency and citizens are able to access information it will ensure accountability.
This among others, for instance, the Petroleum Revenue Management Act (PRMA), enjoins the Minister of Finance to provide information on how petroleum revenues are managed, periodically.
The same law, PRMA 2011, Act 815, also establishes the Public Interest and Accountability Committee (PIAC) to, among others, provide oversight and monitoring regarding the management of petroleum revenues.
As part of its mandate, PIAC is required to prepare and publish reports each year – detailing how much petroleum revenue has been collected during the period under review, and how the amount so collected has been utilised.
This is in addition to other reports regularly published by institutions on the oil and gas sector; like the Ghana Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (GHEITI) and the National Resource Governance Institute (NRGI).
Notwithstanding these, efforts at promoting transparency, that the transition from transparency to accountability has been absent.
Against this backdrop, there is a need to build the public’s capacity; for instance, citizen-organised groups working on corruption, resource management among others, to be able to understand reports on the sector and use them to demand accountability.
The overarching goal is comprehensive transparency and accountability in the governance of natural resources, from the decision to extract to the granting of concessions, the collection of revenues and the management of resource revenues.