Ghana government officials mute over $23m payment from Kosmos Energy
Ghana government officials are not saying anything about payments totaling $23 million being made to government by Texas-based oil producer, Kosmos Energy.
Kosmos Energy has said it is due to pay the government of Ghana an amount of $23 million as the company prepares to sell its shares on the world market.
The amount also forms part of a settlement agreement which Kosmos and the Ghana National Petroleum Corporation (GNPC) entered in December 2010 in resolving certain disagreements the company had with the government of Ghana.
“As part of such agreement and with respect to one particular issue, we agreed to pay GNPC $8 million upon signing the settlement agreement and $15 million upon the first to occur of certain liquidity events, including the successful completion of this offering”, Kosmos Energy told the US Security and Exchange Commission (SEC) when it applied to sell 30,000,000 common shares. US laws require that a company that intends to sell shares its share discloses all matters relating to its business.
In the filing which is published on the SEC’s website, Kosmos said it had disagreements with the Republic of Ghana and the GNPC regarding some of its rights and responsibilities under the West Cape Three Point (WCTP) and the Deepwater Tano (DT) Petroleum Agreements.
“These included disagreements over sharing information with prospective purchasers of our interests, pledging our interests to finance our development activities, potential liabilities arising from discharges of small quantities of drilling fluids into Ghanaian territorial waters, the failure to approve the proposed sale of our Ghanaian assets and assertions that could be read to give rise to taxes payable under the Ghanaian Tax Law in connection with this offering”, the company said.
The company added that, they were requested to provide information to Ghana’s Ministry of Justice in connection with its investigation of the EO Group.
But according to Kosmos, the impasse it had with Ghana has been solved.
“These past disagreements have been resolved”, it said.
There can be no assurance that future disagreements will not arise with any host government or national oil companies that may have a material adverse effect on our exploration or development activities, our ability to operate, our rights under our licenses and local laws or our rights to monetize our interests, Kosmos said.
However, efforts by ghanabusinessnews.com to get confirmation of the payments and to determine if there were any deadlines for the payments were unsuccessful. GNPC officials contacted would not comment on the specific matters.
Ghanabusinessnews.com went to the Ministry of Energy Public Relations Office and we were asked to put our requests in writing. We obliged, but one week after sending the letter and indicating last week Wednesday as our deadline, we still haven’t heard anything from the Ministry.
By Emmanuel K. Dogbevi & Ekow Quandzie