AfrOil: Eni loses appeal against Ghanaian court ruling

Italy’s Eni has lost its appeal against a previous court decision ordering its local subsidiary, Eni Ghana Exploration, to turn over some of the money it was earning from the sale of oil from the offshore Sankofa field.

The Italian major had hoped to overturn this ruling, which was issued in late June. However, the Commercial Court of Second Instance decided on July 26 that Eni still had to deposit 30% of earnings derived from the sale of Sankofa oil into a joint escrow account.

Accordingly, Eni must leave a portion of its oil revenues in this account until it reaches agreement with Springfield Exploration and Production, a privately owned Ghanaian upstream operator, on the unitisation of the Sankofa and Afina oilfields. According to previous reports, the court ruling will see Eni depositing about $40mn per month into the escrow account.

Ghana’s Energy Ministry ordered Eni and Springfield to combine Afina with the adjacent Sankofa field last year, citing a seismic study conducted by Ghana National Petroleum Corp. (GNPC) that purportedly showed the two sites to be part of the same structure. Springfield CEO Kevin Okyere hailed the court’s decision last week, saying that his company continued to favour the Ghanaian government’s call for the unitisation of the two fields.