Eighty Percent Local Content Not Feasible – Lecturer

Employment in the Oil & Gas Sector

BY NANA KOFI KORANTENG
A Senior Lecturer at the Department of Earth Science of the University of Ghana, Dr. Thomas Akabzaa has described government’s target of 80 percent local content in employment in the oil and gas sector by 2020 to be only a dream that is not likely to be achieved.
“As at now we have not developed any potential to contribute effectively to that and it will take a considerable amount of time for us to develop those experiences,” Dr. Akabzaa stated, adding that it would take a very compelling local content legislation to achieve that.
He emphasized that “With only a draft policy now, it will take some time to develop that into legislation, beyond which we also need institutional and economic players that will actively participate in the whole process and that is a very daunting task that we need to overcome”.
Dr. Akabzaa, who was speaking to The Business Analyst at the sidelines of a workshop for a section of the media, to build capacity in oil and gas issues from a gender perspective, argued further that such a high level of local content does not exist even from the places of best industry practices.
“To be realistic, other countries that have done it, even in Norway that we normally use as the best industry practice example, the level of local content after nearly thirty years of being in the industry is less than seventy percent.
“In the case of Nigeria it is under thirty five (percent), so it is not likely that we can have such a very ambitious target within ten years, hence it being a dream rather than a reality,” he stressed.
Dr. Akabzaa expressed skepticism about ever achieving the local content targets within the lifespan of the Jubilee Field, adding that “It is nice to dream big but when it becomes impossible then it is meaningless and certainly unrealistic”.
Commenting on the entire petroleum bill, Dr Thomas Akabzaa observed that the bill is quite ambiguous on “who is the overall controller of the industry and whether it is the Ministry of Energy, GNPC or that there should be an independent Petroleum Regulatory Authority.”
He said it appeared that issue was a very sticky point for the crafters of the bill as well, which explains why they did not clearly define that.
On the environmental implications of the oil exploitation in the country, Dr. Akabzaa indicated that environmental issues have not been strongly incorporated in the petroleum exploration bill.