This memoir — part historical and part autobiographical — traces the author’s involvement with the final phase of petroleum exploration in Ghana, a journey that took over a century, beginning with the first onshore well in 1896. It has been a most interesting journey, with many twists and turns.

In the early days of the existence of the Ghana National Petroleum Corporation, there were various myths and half-truths about the presence or absence of commercial quantities of oil and gas in the basins of the Ghana.

• Nigeria was draining Ghana’s oil and that all that was required was for Ghana to buy powerful machines and begin to pump and drain her own
• Ghana would never find oil until the gods of Nzemaland and the Volta Region had been pacified
• The GNPC Model Production Sharing Agreement was too stringent on contractors

A major seismic interpretation of the Cape Three Points sub-basin of the Western Region, in 1992, would turn out to be the watershed of this new brave phase of exploration in Ghana.

The book was finally launched in Ghana in April 2022.

Hopefully, going to the heart of the matter should help future generations of ordinary Ghanaians, politicians and explorationists understand what it took to make Ghana a petroleum producing country, just in case the country was afflicted by the “Dutch disease.”