Over the years, egregious corruption in the downstream sector of Ghana's oil industry, has enriched some of the greediest and most ruthless crooks ever to collude with our vampire-elites to rip off our nation and its people, in the history of the private-sector of our national economy, since our country rid itself of the British occupiers of our homeland in 1957.
It is the power and influence of those greedy and powerful crooks that made it possible for substandard fuel (that not only damages the health of Ghanaians forced to breath in the poor quality air pervasive in urban Ghana resulting from vehicular emissions, but also ruins the engines of vehicles using it) to be imported into Ghana and legally sold in the forecourts of petrol filling stations across the nation.
They got away with it by blithely making the point, whenever challenged, that the toxic crap they sold to the so-called bulk oil distributors that imported their substandard fuel into our country, met the Ghanaian market's specifications.
And even after pressure on the government from some of us finally resulted in European standards being the new designated market specification for fuel imported into Ghana, those crooks were still able to get the new regulation suspended until their stocks held in Ghana were depleted. Incredible.
If the Chamber of Petroleum Consumers (COPEC) wants to protect vehicle owners and other consumers of refined petroleum products in Ghana, from the baleful influence of those crooks on our leaders, this blog's humble advice to its courageous leadership is to strike an alliance with international groups that promote transparency in the oil indistry globally, such as OpenOil.
They will find that the possibility of their being exposed globally, will act as a powerful disincentive for those in power today, to continue allowing those crooks to carry on with their nefarious activities in the downstream sector of our nation's oil sector.
For the benefit of the leadership of COPEC and our audience of brilliant young Ghanaian professionals, we have culled and posted content from the website of OpenOil. If they want the corruption allegedly going on at the Bulk Oil Storage and Distribution Company Limited (BOST), for example, to come to an end, COPEC must definitely collaborate with OpenOil.
Please read on:
"About OpenOil
OpenOil is a company based in Berlin with a mission to create an open data framework for managing natural resources at a supranational level – because this is the only way natural resources will be sustainable in the long run. The way we build towards this long-term vision is to provide services which increase transparency and cost-benefit analysis of the industries as they are currently run.
We offer training and consultancy services to governments, international organisations, businesses and NGOs and create mechanisms and processes for managing natural resources. Such services include big data curation and interpretation, (our search engine Aleph contains 3 million compliance documents from extractives companies), and financial analysis of large oil and mining projects, where we are currently working with several governments to institutionalise a financial modeling process, based on the FAST modeling standard.
Strong partnerships, and presence on the ground, are essential to our success. Our core team includes economists, software developers, mathematicians, academic researchers and program managers who speak eight languages.
OpenOil is an open data publisher. The Shuttleworth Foundation of South Africa holds a 15% stake."
End of culled content from the OpenOil.net website.
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