Introduction
Since the inception and establishment of GNPC from PNDC Laws 64 and 84 respectively and subsequently becoming fully operational in 1985, GNPC has had the responsibility of being the custodian of all Oil and Gas national data assets in which Ghana has a stake. Hence it has been GNPC’s mission to safely and securely receive and store petroleum data for its operations and actively look to derive value from these datasets, as well as provide new investors and partner’s information about the datasets through an Interactive Web Portal (Figure 1). The formation of the Petroleum Commission, therefore, means that GNPC also shares this information with the Commission through an integrated Portal with shared access rights.

The Portal
The Portal provides descriptive information on data in storage in GNPC to the general public and prospective investors. Its database contains information regarding the petroleum activities in Ghana’s Oil and Gas Basins. The information consists of descriptions (meta data) of all Well Data, Licenses, Seismic Surveys, Facilities and Companies as well as a link to a web-based GIS (Geographic Information System) to enable users view the descriptive data spatially (Figures 2, 3, and 4).

Features
The Portal has an assortment of graphs, charts, queries and reports that will easily and intuitively send the message across to the users. The “Queries” tab gives the user the unique ability to request for specific data on particular subjects based on specific parameters. One such example is “All wells drilled within 2009” or “All 3D Seismic acquired within the Eastern Basin” or “All Licenses awarded to company X”. The Portal also has some of the most interesting and comprehensive charts and graphs for those who want summaries without having to go through the tedious avenues of complex tables or delving deeper into the Meta database (Figure 5).
For those who want to see maps and get high quality information intuitively from these, we have an ArcGIS online to interface with the Meta Database of the portal and present them in map view online. These maps are thematic maps and easily used to convey the necessary information.