Risk Management in Oil And Gas Project Financing

ABSTRACT

Securing adequate financing for oil and gas investments is a difficult task in the best of environments. In Africa, the task is more difficult on account of political, commercial and force majeure risks. These factors serve to limit the interest of international commercial banks, the main source of oil and gas finance in making long-term credit available for the region. This thesis examines the risk mitigation arrangements that can relief the fears of the international financial institutions. Issues of concern to potential lenders, such as completion risk, performance risk, market risk, economic risks, environmental risk and political risks are evaluated. Measures, which tend to minimize lenders risks, such as escrow accounts, political risk insurance, hedging programmes and standby fund facility, are examined. Security packages such as implementation agreement, land conveyance agreement, fuel supply and transportation agreement, and energy purchase agreement, ownership structure agreement and operation maintenance agreement are all examined. Also the various ways of strengthening these security packages to attract private financial institutions to finance oil and gas,projects. The study is an evaluation of the roles played by the international financial institutions namely: International Finance Corporation (IFC), the World Bank, Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency (MIGA), United States Agency for International Development (USAtO) and NIB (Ghana) Limited. The findings of the study were gathered through structured personal interviews and questionnaires and are presented in tables and matrices.