International oil companies (IOCs) and Joint Venture companies have been called upon to help build and develop indigenous Ghanaian companies to their full capabilities within the oil and gas industry.

Mr Egbert Faibille Jnr., Chief Executive Officer of the Petroleum Commission, called on the IOCs to partner the Commission to train more engineers of the Commission in Landmark Software to enhance their skills in the upstream sector.

He said such training would enhance the skills of the Engineers in the discharge of their duties and offer the necessary expertise to the general development of the Petroleum Sector.

Speaking at a side-line event organised alongside the just-ended Offshore Technology Conference (OTC) in Houston Texas, USA, Mr Faibille Jnr indicated that Ghana, on its part was taking measures to train and build the capacities of its citizen, especially the youth, to enable them to work in the sector.

He said through the Accelerated Oil and Gas Capacity (AOGC), a flagship programme of the Commission that was established in 2017, the youth in-country would be empowered with the needed skill set through series of capacity building training to work in the oil and gas sector.

“As a Commission, we are grateful for Halliburton’s willingness to come on board to support activities of AOGC,” he said.

On his part, Mr John Peter Amewu, Minister of Energy wooed more investors to Ghana saying that: “With the soon to be developed Petroleum hub in the Western Region of the country, it is evident that our dear nation is poised for investment opportunities”.

In a remark, Mr Joseph Cudjoe, Deputy Minister of Energy in charge of Finance and Infrastructure, said the current prevailing economic conditions in Ghana required serious minded business people who would operate within the confines of the legal regimes being provided.

Mr Barath Kanan, Senior Area Manager in charge of Halliburton Africa operations, indicated that the success story of Halliburton was as a result of local content participation and their JV partnership since 2015.

He said Halliburton was, therefore, committed to increasing training in technology transfer by 10 percent for Ghanaians under their employment.

The Ghanaian delegation that attended the 2019 OTC, organised from May 6th to 9th, earlier toured the Halliburton headquarters in Houston.

They included; PC and its registered companies, some officials from the Ministry of Energy and Parliamentary Select Committee on Energy.

They also embarked on a laboratory and facility tour to acquaint themselves with the rock technologies and operations of the company.

The field visit formed part of business-to-business meetings of the OTC, which marks its 50th-anniversary celebration of OTC.

The four-day conference afforded global leaders within the upstream sector, industry players and stakeholders to deliberate on effective and sustainable ways to promote local content and local participation.