Related News:
Ghana's Attorney General Says S&P's Sovereign Debt Downgrade Was `Absurd'
Standard & Poor’s downgrade of Ghana’s sovereign-debt rating was “absurd” given that the West African country is about to start producing oil, Attorney General Betty Mould-Idrissu said.
“This coming a few months before first production, before we are about to take off as a nation,” Mould-Idrissu said in an interview on Aug. 30. “This is patently absurd.”
The West African nation’s rating was lowered from B+ to B, five steps below investment grade, on Aug. 27 by S&P, which cited “recent moves by the government to interfere with the sale of privately owned oil assets.”
The downgrade came after Kosmos Energy LLC, a U.S.-based explorer, ended its plans to sell a $4 billion stake in Ghana’s Jubilee oil field to Exxon Mobil Corp. last month after the state oil company said it wanted to buy the stake. Mould- Idrissu’s office is conducting a criminal probe into deals surrounding the field.
Ghana will become Africa’s newest oil producer when crude starts flowing from Jubilee in December. Output is expected to total 120,000 barrels a day by 2011.
To contact the reporter on this story: Jason McLure in Accra on jmclure@bloomberg.net.
Rate These Stories
Rate this Page