Recent technological advances meant that man could finally defy nature in its insatiable quest for Fossil Fuel. From maximum operational depths for offshore rigs hovering around 1km in 1994, it now stands at around 3km in 2010. The $350 million Deep Water Horizon well in the US gulf of Mexico was often cited as a prime example and a record of how far man could conquer nature. That was of course until the April 20th oil explosion ( at pressures of over 2000 psi, oil spill is a huge understatement). The well is now synonymous with the worst oil spill in history, having already spewed over 200,000 litres of crude into the pristine sea, with no end in sight. The previous worst spillage was in 1991, when the retreating defeated Iraqi troops from Kuwait, set fire to oils rigs and left oil valves opened. Clean-up in the Gulf of Mexico is expected to cost close to $1.35 Billion dollars, the total GDP of many a third world nation.

The oil explosion has highlighted our over dependence on oil. The excessive demand for oil has led to a great Amount of risk taking by oil companies. This has led to compromises in safety which has in turn led to an increase in the number of accidents on rigs on a daily basis. The case of the Deep water Horizon has made the headlines because of the level of disaster and the the marine and ecological catastrophe that it has entailed. With Ghana about to start drilling oil in the fourth quarter of this year and our notoriously lax enforcement of safety standards by statutory authorities like the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and National petroleum Authority (NPA), the future looks rather bleak. Can we as a country be able to manage such a disaster? I think not. With the amount of money expected to be generated from the drilling of oil it will be extremely naïve for me to suggest we should put an end to it now. What we should do in the long term is to wean ourselves of fossil fuel by investing and promoting the generation of clean and renewable sources of energy.

Ghana as a nation is blessed with abundant sunshine and strong winds. We can and should set up wind farms and Photovoltaic banks, which can be fed into the national grid to reduce our dependence on fossil fuel based thermal sources of energy generation. Bio-fuels should also be encouraged but regulated to prevent the use of arable lands only for the cultivation of Jathropha. Brazil is a shining example of how a nation can promote the use of Bio-fuels even though it also drills oil. Import duties on cars with hybrid engines should be abolished to promote their use locally.

Promoting renewable energy would do wonders to reducing our dependence on fossil fuels and to promoting a new industry of jobs and commerce built on green technologies.