The Ghana National Canoe Fishermen Council (GNCFC) with support from STAR-Ghana organized a one day press engagement on the impacts of offshore oil and gas.
The theme for the engagement was “A call for the passage of the petroleum (exploration and production) bill into law to address the effects of offshore oil and gas exploitation on environment and fishing livelihoods”.
According to Mr. J.F. Ebembey (secretary of GNCFC), all debates and dialogue to feed the legal and regulatory framework to manage the oil sector is mostly skewed towards revenue maximization neglecting environmental and livelihood concerns. He noted in his welcome address, that, the development of the offshore oil and gas is already affecting fishermen negatively. Stating that there have been some fatal accidents between oil supply vessel and fishing vessel resulting in death of fishermen and destruction of their fishing gears.