- GNPC Set for Larger Commercial Role as Ghana Targets New Oil and Gas Investment
Ghana is preparing to give the Ghana National Petroleum Corporation a more commercially assertive role in the country’s upstream petroleum industry, as the government seeks to strengthen energy security, revive exploration investment and reduce the economy’s exposure to expensive imported fuels.
Mark Prempeh of the Ministry of Energy and Green Transition said the government’s emerging petroleum strategy would increasingly position GNPC as more than a minority participant in oil and gas projects, with the national oil company expected to take larger commercial interests and deepen its involvement across the petroleum value chain.
Mr Prempeh made the remarks at the National Stakeholder Engagement on “GNPC Today: Mandate, Delivery, and the Road to Operatorship in the Context of Energy Transition,” jointly convened by GNPC and the Natural Resource Governance Institute.
“The message from the minister is that GNPC is not going to remain minority stakeholders in the upstream industry,” Mr Prempeh said. “GNPC is to be encouraged to take more commercial interest.”
The policy direction represents a significant shift in the government’s thinking about the role of the national oil company.
GNPC has historically participated alongside international operators, but the government increasingly sees it as an institution capable of retaining a larger share of the commercial value generated from Ghana’s petroleum resources while strengthening the country’s strategic control over energy supply.
Larger commercial stakes would require GNPC to mobilise significantly more capital for exploration, appraisal and field development, while exposing the corporation more directly to geological uncertainty, commodity-price volatility and project execution risk.
Mr Prempeh argued that deeper participation was nevertheless necessary if Ghana wanted a national institution capable of protecting domestic interests when international investors changed strategy or exited assets.
“When everybody else leaves, GNPC succeeds,” he said. “So when GNPC has more skin in the game, when we have more to take, and then we are stretching financially in every aspect of the business to proceed, we believe that our energy security agenda will be on course.”
The government’s position comes at a difficult moment for Ghana’s upstream industry.
Crude production from existing fields has been under pressure, while competition for global exploration capital has intensified. At the same time, the energy transition is forcing national oil companies to reconsider how aggressively they should invest in long-cycle hydrocarbon assets.
For GNPC, the challenge is therefore two-fold: build the technical and financial capacity required for operatorship while ensuring that expansion does not weaken the balance sheet or transfer disproportionate commercial risk to the state.
Gas commercialisation sits at the centre of that strategy.
Mr Prempeh said GNPC remained critical to supplying gas to Ghana’s power sector, particularly as the government seeks to reduce dependence on more expensive liquid fuels used by thermal power plants.
“GNPC plays a key role in our gas commercialisation drive, actually providing us with the gas,” he said. “And as a government, the replacement of liquid fuels for our thermal plants with gas is actually reducing our cost of power generation.”
Greater use of domestic gas in thermal generation could reduce demand for imported liquid fuels, ease pressure on foreign exchange and lower the cost of electricity generation.
It could also improve the commercial attractiveness of upstream gas projects by creating a more predictable domestic market for both associated and non-associated gas.
Alongside the stronger role envisaged for GNPC, the government is pursuing what Mr Prempeh described as a fiscal and regulatory “reset” aimed at making Ghana more competitive for upstream investment.
“We believe that we have to be competitive. As a nation, we have to be competitive in the market. We don’t want to be priced out of investment,” he said.
“The investments are getting fewer. But we have to be attractive and then also attract the right people to do business.”
Ghana competes with other African and global petroleum provinces for scarce upstream capital. Fiscal terms that are too burdensome can undermine project economics and push investment elsewhere, but excessive concessions can reduce the state’s share of future petroleum revenues.
The government will therefore need to design a framework that improves investor returns without surrendering too much economic rent from commercially viable discoveries.
Mr Prempeh said discussions on the fiscal component had advanced across government.
“We are pushing the Attorney General. We are pushing the Ministry of Finance. And currently we have consensus from Ministry of Finance, part of which is the fiscal part,” he said, adding that work on a Cabinet report was nearing completion.
The reform agenda is also expected to involve legislative changes to the framework governing GNPC and the wider petroleum industry.
“We are an evolving industry,” Mr Prempeh said. “When the Act is being reviewed, we believe that we’re going to take away some relics. We’re going to do away with some redundancies in certain aspects of our operations.”
That review could become particularly important if GNPC is expected to move closer to operatorship. Running petroleum assets requires considerably deeper capabilities than holding minority stakes. It demands subsurface expertise, project management, procurement discipline, financing capacity, environmental oversight and the ability to control operational risk.
Mr Prempeh said the reform process should also enable GNPC to deploy technology to reduce its carbon footprint, reflecting growing pressure on petroleum producers to demonstrate credible environmental and transition strategies.
Governance will ultimately determine whether the expanded mandate creates value for Ghana. Mr Prempeh pointed to recent improvements in corporate accountability, including consecutive annual general meetings, as evidence of strengthening institutional discipline.
“In my 20 years as employee of GNPC, this is the first time we’ve seen back-to-back AGM,” he said. “And I think we needed that. And that should tell you the transparency level, the compliance level that they have put in place.”
For Ghana, the road to operatorship is therefore about more than putting GNPC in charge of an oilfield. It is a test of whether the country can build a national oil company with the technical competence, financial resilience and governance safeguards required to compete commercially while protecting the public interest.
If that transformation succeeds, GNPC could capture a greater share of petroleum value and become a stronger anchor for energy security.
If its commercial ambitions run ahead of its financial and institutional capacity, however, greater participation could simply shift more upstream risk onto the state.
That tension between national ambition and commercial discipline is likely to define GNPC’s next phase.
