TEMPLARS Transcripts: Energy and Natural Resources Digest | September 2026

Ghana is moving from financier to standard-setter. The Environmental Protection Authority has issued a framework for monitoring and reporting fugitive methane emissions across the upstream and midstream, on a phased compliance timetable. The gold trade has adopted a single assay standard for purity, and its aggregation arrangements now stand self-funded. Government is meanwhile reviewing petroleum legislation and fiscal terms ahead of a fresh round of agreements, revisiting the currency in which domestic crude is paid for, and proposing minerals amendments that would shorten lease tenure, consolidate exploration licensing and give host communities a voice before licences are considered.

Nigeria is moving in the same direction, with predictability as the organising theme. Qualifying deep offshore projects now sit within a published incentive framework rather than project-by-project negotiation, and the first development structured against it has advanced by contractual amendment toward a final investment decision. Draft regulations would prohibit coordinated conduct among midstream and downstream licensees. In power, intervention in a distribution company, the build-out of State regulatory institutions, public renewable capacity and new transition institutions are reordering the market from several directions at once; in mining, attention turns to processing partnerships and to the liabilities of legacy operations.

In both jurisdictions, entry terms grow more legible and continuing obligations more exacting. Each rewards early engagement, while the instruments are still being settled.