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The Ghana Standards Authority has secured funding to aid the installation of new flow meters on the FPSOs on the country’s oil fields. This is to ensure that the country is able to gauge at the actual levels of crude exported out of the country. The multi-purpose flow meter can accumulate data on how much oil is exported through it right from the first day of its installation.
Speaking in an interview, Professor Alex Duodu, Chief Executive Officer of Ghana Standards Authority, indicated that an approval has been given by the central tender review board to purchase the meters. He however added that parliament has approved GHS50m out GHS250 for the purchase of the equipment. He said “As at this week the central tender review board has given us approval. Now we have the contractor who is going to get going and parliament approved 50m out of 250m for us.”
The group, which won the bid, according to Prof Duodu, is OGC –Dutch technical group. The group is expected to purchase and install the meters on the country’s FPSOs to monitor crude lifting by partners on the oilrigs. The flowing meters are also expected to accurately measure both the quantity and quality of crude. This will aid the Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA) in its revenue collection and prevent tax evasion by oil producing companies in the country.
He said “any fuel coming out of the FPSO we will know what is coming out. We will know both the quantity and the quality. So that will then feed into GRA, then GRA will now know exactly how much we are getting. Because now the situation is basically the oil companies tell what they have taken and they pay tax on that. Shall we say, that it is not satisfactory as a country and now that we are expanding and we are trying to become a petroleum economy?
The last flowing meter, which was installed on the FPSO Kwame Nkrumah was in August 2011.