06:58 p.m Apr 26, 1999 Eastern

ACCRA, April 26 (Reuters) - A three-day African oil and gas conference opened in Ghana on Monday with calls for greater investment in the sector in the continent.

Ghana's vice-president, John Atta Mills, told delegates at the Oil and Gas Africa '99 Conference and Exhibition that Africa could become a promising market.

``Some of us find it a striking paradox that the natural resources of our continent, which have been the basis for tremendous wealth for companies and individuals on other continents, have not secured for us in Africa better living conditions,'' he said in an opening address.

``Demand growth on our continent could provide a stimulus to oil prices, but that will only happen if the oil and gas industry is willing to invest in the infrastructure required for distribution,'' he said.

Mills and delegates paid tribute to the West African Gas Pipeline Project, designed to link neighbours Ghana and Ivory Coast and eventually run as far as Nigeria.

``I think this project is moving ahead quite well. The big breakthrough is that the oil companies now feel the responsibility for not flaring so much gas into the air,'' Carol Bell of Chase Manhattan Bank told Reuters.

``Next is the process of taking the feasibility study forward into actual steel in the ground,'' she said.