The Chairman of the Petroleum Commission, Professor Ivan Addae-Mensah, has called for linkages to be established between the oil and gas industry and other sectors of the economy to generate resources that can be used for the rapid development of national infrastructure.
According to him, although the oil and gas industry presented tremendous opportunities for stimulating national development, the expectation for the sector to propel national development should be seen as a means to development rather than an end.
Speaking at a local content workshop organised by the Petroleum Commission for players in the sector in Accra yesterday, Prof. Addae-Mensah stressed the need for the gas and the industrial sectors to be fully integrated into the local economy for Ghanaians to fully benefit from the oil and gas sector.
He said the commission would do everything possible to implement government’s local content policies to ensure that the sector provided the necessary impetus to strengthen the capacities of local institutions to compete with their foreign counterparts for opportunities.
According to him, current proven exploitation reserves of oil from the Jubilee fields are said to be about 1.6 billion barrels, while production is expected to peak by 2015.
The Deputy Minister of Energy and Petroleum, Mr Benjamin Dagadu, announced that the government had embarked on a capacity-building project, with the help of the World Bank, to strengthen local technical skills in the oil and gas sector.
He also hinted that the government, with the support of the Jubilee partners, had established an Enterprise Development Centre (EDC) to develop small and medium enterprises (SMEs), so that they could meet international procurement requirements.
The EDC, according to the deputy minister, also acted as the focal point for co-ordination between the oil and gas companies and SMEs.
That, he explained, was to position SMEs to take full advantage of business opportunities in the oil and gas sector.
Source: Daily Graphic