Victor Gadabor retweetledi
I have been completely perplexed by the triumphant reporting in the last 24 hours about Ghana having supposedly seen an upsurge in oil production.
As this news run counter to the facts that have been in the public domain for some time now, I decided to take a deep dive.
Sorry to burst the bubble but data is stubborn. The news rested entirely on a comparison of H1 2023 and H1 2024, which was heavily skewed by some new wells brought onstream that then faltered very quickly.
Comparing Q3 2024 to Q3 2023 shows that the decline continues unabatedly. Oil production has, in fact, dropped from a daily average of over 196,000 in 2019 to just a little over 122,000 in recent months.
Setting the facts straight is critical for one reason: the country's forex earnings (aside remittances) are driven by three commodities. All three are experiencing serious headwinds. Feel-good news to generate complacency does no one any good.
brightsimons.com/2024/11/09/gha…
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