Mr. Kofi Armah Buah, the Minister of Energy and Petroleum has announced that the Petroleum Commission has developed medium-term strategies to ensure smooth implementation of the local content Law.

This, he said, includes the development of guidelines, templates as well as a monitoring and evaluation system, and that currently there are about 152 Ghanaian companies out of the 232 companies registered with the Petroleum Commission providing direct and indirect services to the upstream industry.

‘‘Services range from catering/hospitality services, logistics supplies and freight forwarding to fabrication as well as waste management services,’’ he said.

The minister said this at a two-day workshop organised by the Petroleum Commission on Local Content for Small and Medium Services, SMEs, in collaboration with Enterprise Development Centre, EDC, and the Supply Chain Development Programme.

It was on the theme “Creating opportunities for local content participation in the upstream petroleum industry”.

He said as at December 2013 a total number of 6,929 personnel were employed in the petroleum upstream sector — this consisted of 5,589 Ghanaians and 1,340 expatriates representing approximately 80% and 20% respectively.

In terms of disaggregation, he said Ghanaians constitute about 40% of the managerial positions, 52% of the core technical positions and over 70% of other staff.

He explained that in order to enhance Ghanaian employment in the sector, the commission regulates the engagement of expatriate workers by requiring all foreign companies in the sector to submit secession plans indicating the timelines associated with training requirements for Ghanaians to replace expatriate workers.

With regard to contracts, he said there have been significant improvement in the number of local participants in the award of contracts since the inception of oil production — between 2008 and the first quarter of 2014, approximately US$584million has been awarded to Ghanaian companies, and out of this US$218million was awarded to the oil and gas-related activities.

Mr. Buah said to enable Ghanaian SMEs position themselves to take advantage of the numerous business opportunities in the oil and gas sector, government through the Ministry of Energy and Petroleum and the Ministry of Trade and Industry and in collaboration with the Jubilee Partners established the Enterprise Development Centre in 2013.

“It was commissioned to among other things identify and facilitate the development of Ghanaian SMEs for participation in the oil and gas sector, promote collaboration amongst SMEs, as well as arrange third party support for SMEs where necessary,” he said.

According to him, the development of local content is key in ensuring that Ghana’s oil and gas industry serves as a catalyst to sustainable economic development — the Commission, with its mandate to promote local content, has developed medium-term strategies to ensure the petroleum resource provides optimum benefits to Ghanaians.

He noted that the success or failure of local content depends on the collaborative efforts of all stakeholders.
Dr. Juliet Twumasi-Anokye, a representative from the Petroleum Commission, urged local businesses to be abreast with technical standards in the industry.

She said contracts can be awarded to a qualified indigenous Ghanaian company if its value does not exceed 10% of the lowest bid — contractors are to submit procurement plans annually, as well as all required decumentation.

On reservation of goods and services for Ghanaian companies, she made mention of freight forwarding, logistics, manpower, catering, marine operations and logistics, supply of petroleum products, waste-management as well as vehicle leasing and renting among others.

Source: B&FT Online