Asaga: Oil find is a comedy to divert attention from energy crises

The Minority Caucus in Parliament yesterday rebuffed the Energy Minister’s attribution of the significant oil find to the decision by this Government to re-focus the Ghana National Petroleum Corporation solely on its core business.

Explaining his party”s stand at a press conference in Parliament, Moses Asaga, Minority Spokesperson on Energy, lampooned the oil find as a gimmick: a “comedy that is being played to divert attention from the energy crises facing the nation.”
Mr Asaga was in no mood to be smooth on the crude oil find that has gotten the whole nation buzzing. He further accused President John Agyekum Kufuor and his Cabinet of “sniffing” oil at the Castle with empty “excitement.”

“This week we have been treated to some cheap theatre in the House with the Minister of Energy carrying into the House a bag he claimed to contain salt and a bottle he claimed to be oil from the new oil discovery in the Tano basin,” said Mr Asaga.

The National Democratic Congress MP pointed out that various governments in the past made similar claims about oil discoveries only for it to end up being untrue. “What the Minister of Energy did was exactly what his counterpart in the Progress Party Government did in Parliament as reported in the Daily Graphic of June 18th 1970.

Statesman