A high court in Accra has affirmed a directive by the Ghana government for Springfield and Eni to unitise their Sankofa and Afina operations.
The commercial court ruled that the former Energy Minister, John Peter Amewu, acted within the law when he directed the Italian Oil giant subsidiary Eni Ghana, and Springfield Exploration and Production Limited to unitise their blocks.
Eni and Vitol Upstream Ghana had prayed the court to review the former Minister’s 2020 directive.
“A careful reading of Section 34 (1) of the Petroleum Exploration Act, (Act 919) of the year 2018 does not show that the Minister for Energy’s directive violated the said provision of the law,” the court said in its ruling.
The presiding judge, Justice Emmanuel Kwesi Mensah in his ruling on Thursday, October 21st said the court, after carefully reviewing all the affidavit evidence on record in respect of the review application together with their attached exhibits and statements of claim, firmly concluded that the Judicial Review filed by the two oil companies was unmeritorious and should fail.
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Eni and Vitol filed a suit on April 12, 2021, asking the Commercial Court to declare the directive by Mr Amewu in October and November 2020 purporting to impose terms and conditions for unitisation of the Afina discovery and Sankofa field as illegal, arbitrary and unfair to them.
They also prayed the court to declare that the minister did not follow due process of the law in issuing the purported directives and an order quashing the directives.