Tullow Ghana plans to award 80% of contracts to Ghanaian companies in 2019

She was speaking at the Joint Venture and Permitting seminar held by Tullow Ghana. She said explained that even though the company awarded $10 billion out of $16 billion worth of contracts to indigenous and joint venture companies, more capacity building must be done to increase these number on the large scale.

She told Accra-based Joy FM that “for 2019, our target is to achieve 80 percent of contract commitments with local business participation and also achieve a 25 percent spend specifically with indigenous companies.”

She, therefore, encouraged local companies in the petroleum ecosystem to form joint venture partnerships with indigenous equity participation in order to form contracts in the upstream petroleum sector.

In Ghana, some multinational oil and gas companies give contracts to foreign companies despite the existence of a local content law. This is often due to the lack of capacity by local firms to execute them.

Meanwhile, the Petroleum Commission has urged all multinational oil firms to abide by the Law of engaging only local firms enlisted on the company’s registry.

The Head of Legal for the Petroleum Commission, Nana Akua Agyei said defaulting companies breaching the Commission’s rules and regulations will be sanctioned.

“We’ve upped our game when it comes to monitoring. For the past 12 to 18 months. We’re ensuring that every company about to put out a tender is obliged to come for the petroleum register and look through the list to get all registered companies aware of the tendering process so they can apply.”

“Not doing so results in sanctions as per the local content regulations. This is a minimum of 100,000 to 250,000 penalty units that give you about GHc300 million. They don’t stand alone, there are also fines and imprisonments that go with the sanctions,” she added.

Ghana’s Cabinet has approved a policy on local content and participation in the country’s downstream petroleum industry. This is to allow for a Ghanaian-driven and ownership of the petroleum downstream industry.

The new policy framework covers areas such as trading, shipping and bulk distribution of petroleum products, as well as infrastructural development in the petroleum sector such as the construction of port discharge facilities, processing, and petrochemical plants.