ABSTRACT
This chapter examines political legacies and contemporary politics in Ghana’s petroleum industry. Ghana discovered commercial quantities of oil and gas in 2007 and then rapidly developed a petroleum industry that is becoming increasingly important for the national economy. International corruption investigations and a maritime border dispute with Ghana’s neighbours have been significant obstacles in the early development of the industry. These challenges reflect a quest for political parties forging new petroleum legacies for future legitimacy in an increasingly competitive democracy. The two main political parties currently dominating Ghanaian politics – the National Democratic Congress (NDC) and the New Patriotic Party (NPP) – are in a constant battle over the management of the new petroleum industry, although the imaginary of national development through oil extraction and refining dates back to the time of Ghana’s first president, Kwame Nkrumah. To illustrate current processes, this chapter looks at the history and current state of Ghana’s only oil refinery and examines party political strategies to forge imaginaries of development.
