Confronting shifting energy landscapes and contested domestic politics: Ghana's national oil company and the global energy transition

Research on how national oil companies (NOCs) are responding to the global energy transition has focused on the world's largest NOCs, offering little sense of how smaller NOCs – particularly in Africa – are navigating the agenda. We address this lacuna by examining how Ghana's National Petroleum Corporation (GNPC) has been responding to the global energy transition, using a political economy approach grounded in political settlements theory and drawing predominantly on key informant interviews. GNPC has been looking, at least rhetorically, to become more – rather than less – involved in oil & gas activities by taking on a more leading role in driving exploration and production activities. This is both to sustain oil export revenues and ensure domestic supplies of gas as Ghana's designated ‘transition fuel.’ In reality, however, we argue that GNPC lacks the capacities and autonomy to deliver on this high-risk approach, as it has increasingly been used by political elites as a vehicle for dispensing patronage and influencing electoral outcomes within Ghana's competitive political settlement. These realities have historically undermined GNPC's capacity development and, currently, are preventing it from acting strategically in response to the energy transition agenda. Transnational developments are presenting further challenges, as IOC divestments have been pressuring GNPC into rushed investment decisions and appear to be emboldening political elites – who are increasingly invoking the urgency of the energy transition – to try and push through dubious, risky deals with minimal scrutiny. Ghana's active civil-society has, though, consistently resisted these efforts to-date, tempering risks around stranded assets.