IT is true that oil and the wealth generated from it have contributed significantly to improve the living conditions of many in countries where oil has been struck and exploited.
In many countries where oil is exported in hundreds of thousands of barrels a day, the amount of money available to the states and their governments is appreciable enough to register a positive impact in the lives of the people.
The caveat, however, it that there must be the political will or commitment to distributive justice and an irrevocable pledge to the pursuit of the socio-economic well-being of the people.
This is especially the case given the fact that in a good number of cases, the oil find has not only failed to register any impact on the lives of the people but also actually worsened their plight through the destruction of their lands and the pollution of their water bodies and other forms of environmental degradation.
Within the last few weeks, several preparations have been announced, including the securing of storage tankers and security measures, for the last quarter deadline to be met.
We have no reason, at least as of now, to doubt the efficiency of the measures being instituted to facilitate the exploitation of the crude oil at the time indicated by the technical experts and the government.
Indeed, it is our hope and expectation that the time schedule is met so that the many benefits, including more jobs, better incomes, technology transfer and the springing of up of allied industries, will accrue to our nation.
Given the persistent global recession and the negative impact it has had on resource inflows into the country, it will be a matter of considerable relief to the government and the people if additional funds become accessible.
While such funds from oil can prove very useful in supporting the national budget and thereby help the government to realise its developmental goals of making Ghana more prosperous and the lives of the people better, we nevertheless have to be guarded in our optimism and the extent to which we hold the oil find as the panacea to our decades-old underdevelopment and poverty.
It is on record that the 100,000 barrels to 120,000 barrels a day that we hope to realise in the short-term will not be enough to give us the kind of funds that we need as a nation to break the back of poverty and underdevelopment.
Those who have poured millions of dollars into the exploration and exploitation of the commodity will, as major stakeholders, still need to recoup their money and some profits and that, given the relatively smaller quantity of oil to be realised, cannot give us all the money we need to significantly impact the lives of our people in the short-term.
This is why we share in the note of guarded caution issued by the Deputy Minister of Energy, Dr Kwabena Donkor, for the need to manage the high expectation of the people about the “explosion of wealth”.
This is essential so that the people do not get disappointed sooner than later, since, in their disillusionment that the “immense wealth” does not register positively in their lives, trouble could erupt, especially in communities where the oil is being exploited.
We would like to caution that we should not lose our focus on agriculture, especially cocoa and food crop production, mining and manufacturing which have been the pivots around which our economy has revolved.
Oil finds have “killed” many such crucial sectors of the economies of some oil producing countries, thereby making them dangerously over-dependent on the crude, a development which has devastated their economies, especially in times of low crude oil prices on the world market.
Let’s not put all our eggs in one basket.
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