A report by the Institute of Energy Security (IES) has said that the fall in Ghana’s crude oil output over the past six years has led to a potential revenue loss of about 16.5 billion U.S. dollars.
According to the report, oil production in the West African country had slumped about 48 percent from its peak production in 2019.
In real terms, the report said crude production, which stood at 71.44 million barrels in 2019, had fallen to 37.30 million barrels in 2025, adding that the decline is “not a routine cyclical dip” but the culmination of deep-rooted operational and policy challenges.
“”The decline is not attributable to one shock, but to several structural, operational, and policy failures compounding over an unusually long period,” the IES report stated.
Touching on recent developments, the report said total petroleum receipts nosedived by 43.27 percent, from 1.36 billion dollars in 2024 to 770.27 million dollars in 2025, attributing the decline to both lower production volumes and a fall in the average realised crude oil price from 86.12 dollars to 74.93 dollars per barrel.
Natural depletion of mature oil fields, insufficient replacement reserves, and the failure to sign new petroleum agreements since 2018, the report said, were the key factors in the production decline.
Ghana’s oil production remains concentrated in three offshore fields—Jubilee, TEN and Sankofa Gye Nyame.
Despite being Ghana’s largest producing field in 2025 with 22.2 million barrels, the Jubilee field, according to the report, recorded the sharpest year-on-year decline of more than 30 percent, partly due to a planned production shutdown between March 26 and April 8.