Former President John Dramani Mahama finds news that some $100 million has been diverted from petroleum funds for unapproved expenditure disturbing.

He insists that there can be no justification for diverting revenues from the nation’s share of petroleum resources into any other account besides the Petroleum Hold Fund (PHF).

He said this amounts to a violation of Section 3 of the PRMA (Act 815) which “explicitly says that all Petroleum revenue due the Republic derived from whatever source shall be assessed, collected, and accounted for by the Ghana Revenue Authority.”

“Section (15) of the Petroleum Exploration and Production Act (Act 919), is also clear that “Any borrowing exceeding the cedi equivalent of thirty million United States Dollars for the purpose of exploration, development, and production shall be approved by Parliament and shall be in consonance with the Petroleum Revenue Management Act,” Mahama added in a statement.

He asked the Minister for Finance to immediately return all such illegal payments back into the PHF “as there is no record to confirm parliamentary approval on any such loans acquired by GNPC in their work programme.”

The Minority in Parliament last week raised concern over the whereabouts of over $100 million accrued from Ghana’s Petroleum lifting in the first quarter of 2022.

The Minority in a statement said the revenue from the Jubilee and TEN fields to a company was transferred without Parliamentary approval.

The Minority also claimed that the Finance Minister has ceded shares from the 2021 Occidental (Oxy) transaction in respect of the Jubilee and TEN Fields to an offshore company known as JOHL “in a very surreptitious and opaque manner.”