Accra, March 20, GNA - Fourteen young Ghanaian graduate engineers have begun studies in various disciplines in oil and gas exploration and production under Tullow Oil Ghana's sponsorship as part of the company's bid to develop and strengthen local capacity in its upstream industry operations Twelve of the fourteen engineers, all young graduate employees of the Ghana National Petroleum Corporation (GNPC), left Accra for London and Cape Town, from where they will be assigned to specialist institutions in the United Kingdom and South Africa.

Two engineers will be assigned to the company's Ghanaian exploration drilling activities which are in progress. They will remain at the TGL's Head Office in Accra. All the graduates will pursue specialized technical on-the-job training and industrial courses in petroleum engineering, geology, environmental engineering and other oil industry-related study programmes over the next two years. Tullow officials say they are certain that some of the beneficiaries would eventually merit more advanced studies after their initial courses.

GNPC, the regulator of Ghana's upstream oil and gas industry and one of Tullow's key partners in the development of the Jubilee Fields, has placed the development of local capacity and the systematic building of a strong and indigenous human resource base for the emerging petro-chemical industry at the very top of its agenda - an agenda which officials at Tullow Oil say coincides with their company's global operational principles.

Mr. Kofi Esson, Government & External Relations Manager of Tullow Oil Ghana, told journalists at the close of a two-week induction programme organized for the beneficiary graduates in Accra that his company is happy to replicate in Ghana what it has already achieved in Bangladesh, where Tullow maintains only three key expatriates, leaving the bulk of operations in the hands of an indigenous Bangladeshi workforce. "At this stage of the development of the Ghana's oil and gas industry, it is important that we help to ensure that the regulator itself (GNPC) is sufficiently grounded in terms of human resource capacity," Mr. Esson said.

"Tullow so passionately wants to place Ghanaians in charge of the management of Ghanaian assets-especially strategic ones like oil and gas and we believe that we would be drawing closer to this goal if this brilliant and youthful crop of Ghanaian graduate engineers return home to the industry with new and productive ideas and knowledge to drive our industry forward," he said.

The induction, primarily organized to give the young engineers some preliminary insights into seismic survey, drilling and oil production, also touched on the fundamentals of Tullow's global work culture, ethics and value system and also to align the young engineers to the company's practices in exploration, development and production of petroleum and gas. Tullow Oil Plc is one of Europe's leading independent exploration and production companies operating a balanced worldwide portfolio which stretches across Africa, Europe, South Asia and South America. The company's recent exploratory successes in the Jubilee and adjoining fields have made Ghana one of Tullow's most important concessions.