A private equity fund, Aureos Capital sets eyes on Ghana’s emerging oil and gas sector. The company which already has investments in other sectors in Ghana believes the oil and gas sector is ‘interesting’ the Vanguard, a Nigerian publication has said.
An investment executive Kodjo Asiagbe was quoted as saying “The market is there. This is a part of the economy in Africa where capital is lacking.”
“In Nigeria it is oil and gas that dominates everything … everything related to oil and gas is interesting. Ghana is going to start producing oil and that’s interesting,” he said.
The firm’s $50 million West Africa Fund, an earlier vehicle focused on Ghana, Nigeria and Senegal, was fully invested by 2008. Around $45 million has been returned, and investments remain active in eight of 11 firms in which Aureos took a stake, the report said.
Firms in which it has so far invested via the Africa Fund include Ghanaian real estate company Regimanuel Gray, Kenyan food processor Brookside Dairy, and Ciments du Sahel, a Senegalese family-owned cement firm, where more than $10 million of Aureos’ money financed a major capacity expansion, it added.
Ghana has the largest oil field to be discovered in West Africa in the last 10 to 15 years. The Jubilee oil field according to Tullow Oil contains 1.5 billion barrels of oil. Another field Tweneboa is said to contain 1.4 billion barrels of oil. Commercial production of oil is expected in November or December 2010.
The Bank of Ghana has predicted a GDP growth of above 20% by 2011 following commercial production of oil in the country by December 2010.
By Emmanuel K. Dogbevi