80 percent of Ghanaian owned registered Petroleum companies not active

This is despite the Commission’s claim that the local content participation in Ghana’s oil and gas sector is improving.

In an interview with Accra-based Citi FM, the Business Advisory and Enterprise Development Manager at the Petroleum Commission, Kwasi Senya, explained that 82% of the 771 registered companies with the Commission are indigenous. However, most of them are not operational.

For example in 2018, the Petroleum Commission approved $420 million worth of contracts, however, only $77 million went to indigenous Ghanaian companies.

However, through Ghana’s local content policy, more indigenous companies are expected to provide most of the services to the upstream oil and gas sector.

Kwasi Senya said this is not the case because most of the Ghanaian registered companies with the Petroleum Commission are not active and therefore cannot benefit from such contracts due to limited capacity.

“Less than 20% are doing active activities. The rest are hoping for an opportunity to come in. The industry is not like buying and selling where you can go and buy from Okaishie and sell. There are standards and requirements. Often times where they are invited to tender, a lot of them do not follow the requirements in the invitation to tender. They think they have to come and they bring anything, but we are constantly providing that kind of advisory services to them.”

The Manager at the Cost Audit of the Petroleum Commission, Frederick Owusu Mensah, added that Ghanaian companies fail to partner to operate as a joint venture to play significant roles in the sector.

“The participation of Ghanaians is quite minimal. They seem to be confined in areas we call the low hanging fruits. They are in areas such as accommodation, logistics, and catering. There are few Ghanaian companies that are doing the hardcore activities. If that continues, it is going to render the objectives for which the petroleum policies were formulated null and void.”