Ghana Uncovers over 1bn Barrels of Oil, 2.5trn Cubic Feet of Gas in Tano Basin
By Prince Ahenkorah
The Ghana National Petroleum Corporation (GNPC), has identified the potential to unlock more than one billion barrels of oil and 2.5 trillion cubic feet of natural gas from stranded resources in the Tano Basin.
The discovery, made through spatial data analysis using Geographic Information Systems (GIS), could provide a major boost to Ghana’s declining oil and gas production.
The analysis is part of efforts by GNPC to explore ways of developing petroleum resources that may not be commercially viable if developed as standalone projects.
Senior Geomatic Engineer at GNPC, Emmanuel Boadum Donkor, disclosed this on the sidelines of the Esri User Conference West Africa 2026, hosted by Sambus Geospatial Limited.
He said GIS analysis was helping the Corporation identify opportunities to connect existing petroleum infrastructure to stranded resources, thereby reducing the cost of developing new infrastructure.
“With only the Tano Basin that we have done the analysis around, we have been able to identify over 1 billion barrels of oil that we can actually potentially add to our production rate and about 2.5 trillion cubic feet of gas that we can actually add to our current production to boost it,” he said.
According to Mr Donkor, developing each stranded resource independently would require substantial capital expenditure, making some of the projects commercially unattractive.
He said GNPC was instead considering a hub-based development model, under which several stranded resources could be connected to existing infrastructure and developed collectively.
“If you take up the CAPEX in terms of developing the infrastructure to extract these stranded resources independently, if you compare it to doing it in the hub way which we are seeking to do, you realise that it brings down the cost of investment and then it actually boosts our confidence to be able to extract these stranded resources,” he explained.
He said the approach could allow Ghana to maximise the use of infrastructure already available in the petroleum sector while reducing the need to construct separate facilities for individual discoveries.
Mr Donkor further highlighted the growing importance of GIS in GNPC’s planning and decision-making processes, noting that about 80 per cent of the Corporation’s data contains location information.
“At GNPC it is a very significant part of us, as our data contains about 80% location information, and that tells you how significant positioning is to our industry,” he stated.
He explained that GIS allows GNPC to integrate data on oil and gas wells, pipelines, roads, settlements, farms and environmentally sensitive areas to determine the most appropriate locations for petroleum infrastructure.
The technology, he said, also enables the Corporation to assess potential environmental and social impacts before infrastructure projects are undertaken.
The proposed hub-based approach is therefore expected to help GNPC reduce development costs while improving the commercial viability of stranded petroleum resources.
However, Mr Donkor said further work would be required before the identified resources could be developed.
He said the next phase would depend on reaching agreement on how the opportunities identified through the GIS analysis would be implemented.