By: Fred Yaw
Sarpong- Daily Express
About
300 Ghanaian companies are currently engage in several services in the Oil and
Gas industry in Ghana, according to Mr. Kwaku Boateng, the Director of Service
at the Petroleum Commission in an interview with the Daily Express.
Mr.
Boateng said before the commencement of oil exploration in Jubilee Field in
2010, the number of local companies were about 150, adding that currently there
are about 300 Ghanaian firms providing services in Jubilee Field.
The
Daily Express gathered that these companies mainly provided services such as
catering, protocol services, provision of manpower services, fabrication,
plumbers, straight forwarding, logistics and among others.
Mr.
Boateng said the increase of Ghanaian participating companies in the industry
indicate the well execution of Local Content Law in the sector.
“The
industry is very young in Ghana. We discovered oil in 2007 but actual
production started in 2010 and when you look at the enthusiasm and the level of
participation by the local companies as compare to other countries that are in
similar situation like Ghana, I will say that Ghanaian companies in the oil and
gas industry have done very well,” he told Daily Express.
However,
he mentioned that Ghanaian companies have failed to go into contracts such as
great engineering, wire testing, wire logging which are still been handling by
the foreign entities.
“We
are anticipating that with the initiative of joint venture partnership between
the foreign companies and the local ones there will be able to accelerate
technology transfer so that Ghanaian companies can also move to more sophisticated
areas such as engineering contract,” said Mr. Boateng.
He
said Ghana’s Oil and Gas industry is highly sophisticated, highly technological
capital intensive area and a company need a lot of money and sophisticated
technology before such company can participate. “The standards are high and one
need to be very careful not to make mistakes,” he added.
“We
still have a long way to go in terms of Ghanaian companies improving their
level of professionalism. They fall short in areas like raising huge capital
for a big project in the industry. Most of the local firms cannot raise a
minimum of about US$100 million as a capital for contract in the industry,”
said Mr. Boateng.
He
noted that most of the local companies usually face constrains in securing loan
facility from the banks because they have refused to form partnership or
consortium to work together. “What they should have done is to come together
and raise such loan facility to compete among the multinationals in the
industry,” he stated.
He
reiterated that some of them also fall short in area of technical
certification. “In this sector you need technical certification in order to be
engage by these foreign companies. A lot of them failed in this area and its
affecting them.”
“They
even lack in business process and how to put management in place, health safety
and environment and among others. These oil companies are multinationals and if
they decided to do business with you, they will be sure that they are dealing
with qualify and a genuine company. They want to see certain qualities in place
in order to make sure that such a local company is a credible company.”
The
attitudes of Ghanaian managers and their entities toward the delivering of
services to the multinationals companies are also bad. He said some of them do
not have a proper record of their activities. “With such a company don’t expect
contract from a multinational company,” he emphasized.
He
expects that the number of local company participating in the oil and gas will increase
and their attitudes will also change.
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