President John Mahama and his Ivorian counterpart, Alassane Ouattara \u00a0are reportedly close\u00a0 to reaching an agreement\u00a0\u00a0 over the maritime border dispute that led to a ban on new oil drilling in the area under contention.<\/p>\n
This is according to the news agency, Reuters.<\/p>\n
Reuters said the revelation was made former UN Secretary General, Kofi Annan, who is the mediator for the current talks between Ivory Coast and Ghana.<\/p>\n
Asked during a pause in the discussions in Geneva, whether the two sides were close to reaching a deal, Mr. Annan \u00a0told Reuters: “Yes, we are.”<\/p>\n
An international tribunal ruled last month that Ghana could continue developing a $4.9 billion offshore oil project in the area but imposed a ban on new drilling.<\/p>\n
The decision by the Hamburg-based International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea was regarded as positive for Ghana and British oil firm Tullow, which leads a consortium developing the TEN field, where it has already drilled the wells it needs to start production.<\/p>\n
The Ivory Coast’s presidency said President Alassane Ouattara left Abidjan on Sunday for the talks with his Ghanaian counterpart John Dramani Mahama.<\/p>\n
The Hamburg tribunal did not judge the merits of the case and the court is expected to make a final ruling in 2017.<\/p>\n
Analysts indicate that precedent suggests it is unlikely to redraw the current equidistant maritime boundary.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
By: Citifmonline.com\/Ghana with files from Reuters<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
President John Mahama and his Ivorian counterpart, Alassane Ouattara \u00a0are reportedly close\u00a0 to reaching an agreement\u00a0\u00a0 over the maritime border dispute that led to a ban on new oil drilling in the area under contention. This is according to the news agency, Reuters. Reuters said the revelation was made former UN Secretary General, Kofi Annan, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":95614,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[43,38],"class_list":["post-115278","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-foresight-medical-center","tag-palaver-newspaper"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115278","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=115278"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115278\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/95614"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=115278"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=115278"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=115278"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}