* In February 2025, the new Minister of Energy announced Ghana’s withdrawal of the forced unitisation directive between ENI’s Sankofa field and Springfield’s Afina discovery.
* IMANI was full of praise for the Minister because the forced unitisation order first issued in April 2020 was plainly absurd. It sought to compel Eni and Vitol to combine the Sankofa field (developed at a cost of almost $7bn) that was a proven, producing, field with Springfield’s Afina, which did not even have confirmed commercial find and hand over 55% of the merged field to Springfield.
* IMANI is aware of the intense lobbying of the current government by powerful people who held sway over the previous one to persist the wrongheaded policies of the past. The government’s and the Minister’s decision to stand their ground on the unitisation issue thus impressed us.
* News that the government may want to buy Afina outright worries us because it could open the door for a capitulation to the lobbyists and backroom dealers.
* Afina remains a high-uncertainty asset. It is essentially a one-well discovery with long-delayed appraisal, fragmented testing history, and contested resource estimates. The absence of consistent, transparent, regulator-validated data makes any attempt to fix a reliable commercial value inherently speculative and vulnerable to political influence.
* At any rate, Ghana owns stakes already in Afina through Explorco and GNPC. It can choose to lend funds to the implicit joint venture to de-risk the Afina prospect through additional appraisal, including by drilling another well to improve commercial confidence.
* This loan can be structured as a convertible with Ghana owning the exclusive option to convert the loan to additional equity in the block. The option could have step-up provisions towards granting Ghana a controlling stake if necessary.
* The beauty of such an arrangement is that Springfield would then need to bring on board new farm-in partners to avoid being diluted to marginal minority status. At any rate, if Springfield is incapable of bringing onboard additional commercial partners, then it would mean that the block is not commercially viable, a critical assay for any spending by Ghana.
* Springfield’s initial public claim of over one billion barrels of recoverable reserves has not been independently verified through a full appraisal programme overseen by the Petroleum Commission. Contradictory interpretations from ENI, GNPC, and external analysts underscore the depth of technical ambiguity. In simple terms, the block could be worthless.
* Unfortunately, the process of confirming whether the block is commercially valuable for Ghana cannot be limited to a review of data collected by Springfield. The Minister’s suggestion that he could base a decision to acquire the block on such a review is untenable. Determining the commercial viability of the block would likely involve significant new investment under an arrangement controlled by the government as a lender.
* GNPC’s exploration of a state-led acquisition based on limited data collected by Springfield risks converting private corporate risk into public fiscal liability. And, no, this cannot be addressed by just hiring a new consultant to vet data collected by Springfield and its contractors in a limited appraisal program designed and controlled by Springfield.
* Springfield’s reported debt exposure and its legal dispute with Swiss trader Petraco raise serious questions about whether GNPC could inadvertently absorb legacy liabilities or financially distressed obligations through the Afina deal. The company that drilled the only well at Afina has already won arbitration proceedings against Springfield because of the latter’s refusal to pay its bills. All this raises questions about what actual serious investments Springfield has made in Afina for which reason it should dictate commercial terms through an acquisition process.
* Public denials by GNPC that it endorsed the infamous US$700 million valuation are welcome, yet insufficient. The valuation environment remains compromised if the process continues to rely on data curated or filtered by Springfield, the party with the strongest incentive to inflate asset value.
* Analysts have maintained the consistent position that Afina’s commerciality is unproven and that prior valuation ranges derived from Springfield-supplied data reflect optimism bias and weak regulatory oversight. These concerns remain valid and unaddressed by conclusive, regulator-supervised independent appraisal.
* The government’s evolving position under Minister John Jinapor reflects greater restraint and technical caution, particularly the commitment that any acquisition must be based on independent expert valuation. However, independence must be also be technical sound.
* There has simply not been sufficient appraisal to collect enough serious data for any valuer to work with.
* Once enough robust data is available, the focus can then switch to the appraisal procedure. Who selects the valuer, defines the scope, and controls data access will remain critical. We demand a full seat for civil society at that table to boost public confidence given the murky history of the Afina block.
* GNPC faces a structural conflict of interest: it cannot credibly act as buyer, technical assessor, and quasi-regulator simultaneously. The Petroleum Commission must reassert primacy as the technical arbiter, with full access to raw seismic and well data, and authority insulated from political or commercial pressure.
* Ghana’s current macroeconomic context (debt restructuring, fiscal consolidation, and IMF conditionalities) makes any large-scale upstream acquisition particularly risky and unwise.
• Capital allocated to an outright acquisition of Afina could crowd out more sustainable investments in proven gas infrastructure or other energy-infrastructure priorities.
* International best practice (e.g. Norway, UK, & Canada) shows that unitisation and asset transfers work best when governed by transparent data-sharing, regulator-led reservoir modelling, and strict separation between state ownership and commercial decision-making. Ghana’s process so far falls short of this benchmark.
* Comparative experiences from Brazil and Nigeria illustrate the danger of “national champion” strategies that overburden state oil companies with politically motivated acquisitions, leading to inefficiency, corruption exposure, and value destruction. Afina risks becoming another such cautionary tale if discipline is not enforced.
* A state acquisition of Afina can only be justified if strictly ring-fenced to the asset itself, excluding all non-Afina liabilities, backed by independent double-blind technical reviews, and publicly scrutinised by Parliament with civil society input prior to any commitment.
* But even these safeguards are not the first step. The first step is to design, fund, and execute a robust appraisal program to gather rigorous data. This first step to de-risk the prospect would naturally involve far less money than being bandied about.
* That money should be provided in the form of a convertible loan after the governance of Afina has been retooled to ensure that the current joint management committee has multistakeholder state and society dominance and assumes substantive control of the appraisal.
* Otherwise, the Afina acquisition would represent a classic moral hazard scenario: rewarding weak corporate governance, offsetting speculative risk at public expense, and institutionalising a precedent where distressed private oil firms can lobby the state for financial rescue via “strategic” resource narratives.
* The Afina saga is therefore not merely about petroleum. It is a powerful test of this government’s commitment to good governance and the prudent use of the public purse.