By www.newspublictrust.com Staff Writer
The CDC government of President George Weah on Tuesday announced it is preparing to reopen the Harper Basin Oil and Gas Exploration bid, despite the nearly on-year-old government’s failure to do comprehensive audit of the tainted National Oil Company of Liberia (NOCAL).
The undrilled Harper Basin lies offshore Liberia between the Liberian-Sierra Leone Basin to the north, and the Ivorian/Tano Basin to the south-east, according to GEO ExPro.
This Basin is also said to cover approximately 20,000 km2, extending from shelf to basin floor and is an embayment formed between two transform ridges: Grand Cess to the north and Cape Palmas to the south.
NOCAL was plunged into bankruptcy during the dying days of the administration of former President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf government, due widespread reports of gross mismanagement and pillaging of the entity’s resources in past years.
In a statement issued on Tuesday, November 6, 2018, the Executive Mansion said that the government has seen the need to start the process of reopening the Harper Basin Oil bid against the background of the “poor state of the economy”; President Weah’s inaugural address promise that “Liberia is open for business”; the appointing of a new NOCAL management, among other things.
“In view of this development, the President has accordingly mandated relevant institutions to work out necessary modalities for a successful reopening of the Harper Basin for oil & gas exploration,” said the statement from the Liberian Presidency.
The government said all this but it did not say that NOCAL has been subjected to a forensic audit or any audit of the bare minimum. But it said that “the President has been working tirelessly with partners to identify and develop frameworks to revive the economy and eventually bring relief to the Liberian people.”
NOCAL, which was for several years headed Mr. Robert Sirleaf—one of the sons of former President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf who was later succeeded by Dr. Randolph McClain, descended into bankruptcy toward the end of the Sirleaf government.
The once lucrative institution also at one point considered a “cash cow” ended up in the red so much so that the Ellen government had to infuse millions of dollars into it. Many workers had to be laid off, while the top managers who ran the entity aground were sent off with fabulous severance pay. Amidst the financial scandal, ex-President Sirleaf said she took responsibility for the mess although none of the top guards were made to account for the saga.
Mr. Karmo D. Vile, Vice President for Finance at NOCAL told the media in June 2015 that to date, of the US$85 million that was budgeted, we have only raised US$1.4 million. Om the overall, revenue performance would be very weak which means that our expenses would exceed our revenue.
Mr. Vile also said as a result of the shortfall in their revenue inflow, NOCAL has decided to cut its expenses by 48% and reduce its contribution to the 2015/2016 national budget down to US$3 million from US$54 million in previous financial year.
The late Harry Greeves, former Managing Director of the Liberia Petroleum Refinery Corporation (LPRC) and vocal politician and one-time close aide to former President Sirleaf strongly criticized the former Liberian leader for not penalizing her son and others for the reported excesses that took place at NOCAL. Before his death, he strongly spoke out against the alleged siphoning of some US$32 million at NOCAL revealed in an audit report.
In one of his revelations published before his mysterious death, Mr. Greeves, who had fallen out with President Sirleaf said: “In March this year (2015), the National Oil Company of Liberia (NOCAL) had in its bank accounts a staggering US$80 million. But by the end of June 2015 – three months later – that money had been spent, using a palsy balance of US$500,000.”
NOCAL has also been under the spotlight for a number of shady transactions in the awarding of various oil blocks, including the ExxonMobile. The shady schemes reportedly involving NOCAL starting from the time oil exploration licenses had been issued dating back to 2012, but no one has been brought to book.
Back on February 22, 2012, the US-based ProPublica wrote: “No one has been prosecuted or charged with wrongdoing for the alleged bribes. According to a cache of U.S. diplomatic cables obtained by ProPublica under the Freedom of Information Act, both Sirleaf and the U.S. State Department pushed for the three allegedly tainted concessions to be sold to Chevron even after the allegations became public. ExxonMobil is now zeroing in on the fourth concession. These transactions give U.S. companies potentially rich new oil reserves, and the Chevron deal alone marks the largest concession in Liberia’s history, according to one of the diplomatic cables.”
Meanwhile, the CDC government has not given the exact date of the Bid Round for the Harper Oil Basin but says it will begin in 2019.
Tuesday’s Executive Mansion statement says “The government announces that it will be hosting a Bid Round in 2019 for the Harper Basin exploration, and wishes to encourage interested companies to take advantage of the groundbreaking opportunities to invest in the sector.
“Also, the President has directed and advised the relevant institutions to develop appropriate frameworks to enhance and facilitate the successful hosting of the 2019 Bid Rounds.”
All eyes and ears will certainly be focused on this oil exploration bidding activity by the Weah government, which after just over ten months in office has experienced one controversy after another, with the latest being the nearly 16 missing billion Liberian dollars saga.
According to GEO ExPro, the geological structure and tectonic history of the Harper basin is similar to that of adjacent ones. The Ivorian/Tano Basin is also said to be a proven oil producer that contains several large oil fields, including the Jubilee Field, while the Liberian Basin is still relatively early in the exploration cycle but has had several oil discoveries over the last five years.
The Harper Basin is therefore considered to offer very good hydrocarbon prospectivity.