The Ghana National Petroleum Corporation (GNPC) announced that spatial data analysis using Geographic Information Systems (GIS) could unlock more than one billion barrels of oil and 2.5 trillion cubic feet of gas from stranded resources in the Tano Basin, a move that could help reverse Ghana’s declining oil production.
Senior Geomatic Engineer Emmanuel Boadum Donkor told a business audience at the Esri User Conference West Africa 2026 that GIS is enabling GNPC to identify how existing petroleum infrastructure can be connected to stranded resources, thereby cutting development costs.
“With only the Tano Basin that we have done the analysis around, we have been able to identify over 1 billion barrels of oil that we can actually potentially add to our production rate and about 2.5 trillion cubic feet of gas that we can actually add to our current production to boost it,” Donkor said.
Developing the resources independently would require significant capital expenditure. A hub‑based approach, supported by GIS, could bring several stranded resources together and make their development more commercially viable, he explained. “If you take up the CAPEX in terms of developing the infrastructure to extract these stranded resources independently, if you compare it to doing it in the hub way which we are seeking to do, you realise that it brings down the cost of investment and then it actually boosts our confidence to be able to extract these stranded resources,” he added.
GIS has become a key decision‑support tool for GNPC. Donkor noted that about 80 % of the Corporation’s data contains location information, allowing the integration of wells, pipelines, roads, settlements, farms and environmentally sensitive areas to support petroleum infrastructure development while minimising potential impacts.
The proposed approach could therefore allow Ghana to leverage infrastructure already in place rather than developing separate facilities for individual stranded resources. The next phase will depend on reaching agreement on how the identified opportunities can be implemented, Donkor said.
As Ghana looks to boost its oil output, the GIS‑driven strategy represents a potentially cost‑effective path to tapping untapped reserves in the Tano Basin.
