Dr Juliette Twumasi-Anokye, Principal Consultant of Anojul, Afriyie and Co. has urged Ghanaians to understand value chain in the oil and gas industry to take advantage of local content opportunities.

She said it was prudent for Ghanaian companies to know how the industry was structured from exploration, appraisal, development, production and decommissioning for an appropriate investment.

Dr Twumasi-Anokye said this in Accra at the second quarter forum on the theme: “Accessing the Local Content Opportunities in the Oil and Gas sector”, organised by the Accra Mining Network.

She explained that local content in the perspective of the country focused on the percentage of locally produced materials, personnel, financing, goods and services rendered to the sector, measured in monetary terms.

She said some of the reservations for goods and services for local content in the sector were vehicle leasing and rentals, basic fabrication and construction, the supply of drinks and industrial water, finance and banking and legal services.

She explained that the country discovered oil in commercial quantities offshore along the Cape Three Points in the Western Region in 2007 after years of prospecting.

She said production in the Jubilee Field started with 80,000 barrels of crude oil per day and has currently reached a production level of 110.000 barrels per day and expected to peak at 120,000 barrels per day in the years ahead.

She said experts believed that the Voltaian Basin hold oil and gas reserves, which government through the Ghana National Petroleum Corporation was seeking to fully explore.

Dr Twumasi-Anokye explained that government had expanded the country’s oil resource with the arrival of the Floating Production Storage Offloading John Evans Atta Mills for the Tweneboa, Enyenra and Ntomme Fields, expected to produce about 23, 000 barrels of crude a day.

She said in a bid to ensure that Ghanaians are not sidelined; Parliament passed the local content and local participation regulation (L.I. 2204) in 2013 to put indigenous Ghanaians at the forefront of all petroleum activities.

The L.I. sought to promote the maximization of value-addition and job creation through the use of local expertise, goods and services, businesses and financing in the petroleum industry value chain and their retention in the country, among others.

Dr Twumasi-Anokye said the sector was faced with challenges such as transfer policy, low level of activities, importation rather than local production, inadequate certification and, the limited capacity of local companies to deliver required services.

Some of the participants were of the view that, there should be the need for government to ensure that the local content law was implemented to the latter.

For instance, the regulation states that for any contract be awarded to any company, if foreign, “there shall be at least a five per cent equity participation of an indigenous Ghanaian company other than the Corporation to be qualified to enter into a petroleum agreement or a petroleum license.”

The participants urged the government to create schemes to train locals to take advantage of opportunities in the downstream sector and if possible the upstream sector.

They were of the view that, the government could train more fuel tanker operators or purchase fuel tankers for them on credit to help in the transportation of oil and gas or train more people to work in local refineries and in the extraction process.