COLLABORATIVE STRATEGIES TO DEVELOP LOCAL CAPACITY IN WEST AFRICA

OIL PRODUCING COMPANIES IN WEST AFRICA

WEST AFRICA PETROLEUM RESOURCES

• ?West Africa remains the beehive of exploration activities due to the Gulf of Guinea been endowed with billions of barrels of oil reserves.
• ? According to a U.S. Geologic Survey Fact Sheet issued in February of 2010, there have been more than 275 new oil fields discovered in West Africa since 2000.
• ? Africa had proven oil reserves of 117.481 billion barrels at the end of 2007 or 9.49 % of the world's reserves and in 2007 the region produced an average of 10317.6 thousand barrels of crude oil per day or 12.5% of the world total; of this West Africa accounts for 33.8 billion barrels of proven oil reserves or 3.1% of the global total (BP, 2008).

RESOURCE OVERVIEW

?The discovery of oil in commercial quantities by Ghana in 2007 brought so much excitement to Ghanaians for obvious reasons.

?Despite the endowment of West Africa with oil reserves, socio-economic development, especially in oil producing countries, is unsatisfactory in order to deliver its citizenry from extreme poverty and improve social services and infrastructures. The discovery of oil in West Africa has therefore become a resource curse rather than a blessing (Robert, 2015).

?Admittedly, the discovery of oil in itself does not automatically translate into development. Instead,? the strategies, the economic framework and policy decisions of the government which creates the environment for investment (FES,2011).

Investment in education, innovation, technology and development.

LOCAL CAPACITY BUILDING

?Capacity building in this context may be all the processes by which governments, individuals and organizations within West Africa acquire, advance, and retain the knowledge, expertise, tools, equipment and other resources needed to manage the petroleum resources efficiently.

?Research shows that the collaboration pattern for countries in Africa is far from universal.? Instead, it exhibits layers of internal clusters and external links that are explained not by monotypic global influences but by regional geography and perhaps even more strongly, by history, culture and language.

STRATEGIC LOCAL CAPACITY BUILDING

?Capacity building must be intentional with measurable strategies put in place to reach the goal of interest.

?Capacity building requires careful planning to target the right people and build the right skills at the right time and over time. Evidence suggests that capacity-building initiatives tend to be more effective when they are conceived as an ongoing strategic commitment.

?There are various capacity-building strategies that the West Africa oil producing states can adopt, depending on need, context, demand and desired outcomes of the oil resource.

INTEREST GROUPS FOR CAPACITY BUILDING

REASONS TO BUILD LOCAL CAPACITY IN WEST AFRICA

WHO SHOULD DELIVER THE CAPACITY BUILDING

COLLABORATIVE STRATEGIES FOR CAPACITY BUILDING

?Most oil producing countries in West Africa already have policies and strategies to build and improve local capabilities and economic progress.

?Examples include local content policies for Nigeria, Ghana, Liberia, etc,

?Effective capacity building becomes highly beneficial by generating inclusive processes that strengthen trust and build commitment and good relationships.

?Varying extent of expertise and extraction rate in different countries within West Africa.

COLLABORATIVE PARTNERSHIPS FOR RESEARCH

The output of a country, reflects how much money is going into its research system, and is likely to be partly dependent on its general economy.

?They compared publications with Gross Domestic Product (GDP) for each country, reasoning that proportionate investment in the knowledge economy is a good index of a government’s commitment to maximise the longer term benefit of resource development and exploitation for the general wealth of its people.

COLLABORATE TO PROMOTE PEACE AND SECURITY

?Debatably, Africa has experienced about half of the world’s conflicts, despite being 16% of the world’s population (Enaifoghe, 2018).

?Despite the bearing of the larger share of the world’s conflict impediment, Africa has relatively become more peaceful as well (Dorrie, 2016).

?ECOWAS and AU have contributed towards peace in West Africa.

?ECOWAS has sought to promote democracy in two principal ways. First, it has expanded its role in election monitoring, Second, the adoption of the Protocol on Democracy and Good Governance in 2001 practically translates into a zero-tolerance stance against unconstitutional changes of power, and grants the right to impose sanctions against such illegitimate governments(FOI,2015)

COLLABORATE TO IMPROVE EDUCATION

?Formal Education and informal education.

?The Petroleum Engineering, Geoscience, Management and Entrepreneurship development must veer from only theory to include full technology based learning.

?Three key areas have contributed to much of the growth in the oil and gas industry in the past few years: Deepwater oil and gas, heavy oils, and unconventional oil and gas. Such development requires drilling rigs, trucks and other equipment, crews to drill and complete wells, facilities to process oil and gas before transportation, and pipelines to move products to markets or refineries (ILO, 2012).

?A fundamental phrase in the oil and gas industry is “technically recoverable”. the diffusion of technology over time have proved its resilience and ability to respond to change. For several decades in Oil and Gas exploration, activities were dominated by oil seeps, surface structures and shallow onshore vertical drilling. All this changed with the advent of seismic wireline logs, improved earth modelling and the development of offshore drilling.

?Information technology revolution provided the industry with new tools: modelling and measurements and this must be incorporated into our curricular.

?There must be exchange programs within universities in west Africa for students to? benefit from learning resources and knowledge in other countries.?

COLLABORATE FOR SKILLS DEVELOPMENT AND TRANSFER

?A wide range of skills is substantially lacking in the oil and gas industry including technical, soft and managerial skills, with particularly acute shortages in technical occupations such as petrochemical engineers, petroleum engineers and geologists. These shortages are imposing challenges to the maintaining of scheduled daily operations in the industry; national oil companies (NOCs), international oil companies (IOCs) and services companies (contractors) are all affected(ILO. 2012)

?Most West Africa countries may experience this due to recent discoveries.

?Collaborate to formulate a training strategy for the sector, which must include respect for rights at work, non-discrimination, equal opportunities and treatment for women and men (including youth), good governance, transparency and accountability.

?Draw on talented workers from diverse labour supply pools that have previously not been sufficiently utilized. There has been little success in increasing the numbers of skilled women workers, except in limited cases. A climate of diversity needs to be developed by promoting family friendly policies for both women and men, equal pay for work of equal value, equal opportunities and equal treatment for promotion, and non-discrimination. also a need to increase the number of women in managerial positions.

?It is important for young workers of both sexes that companies have gender-differentiated career development plans in place, including mentoring to meet their need for guidance on their career path, advice on day-to-day issues in the workplace and personal development. Coordination and cooperation are also required for skills migration policies.

IMPROVE AND IMPLEMENT LOCAL CONTENT POLICIES

Local Content refers to the quantum/percentage of locally produced materials, personnel, financing, goods and services rendered to the oil industry and which can be measured in monetary terms

?Improving local content would subsequently build local capabilities, as more opportunities would be available.??

?Petroleum (Local Content And Local Participation) Regulations, 2013, Ghana Upstream Development Programme (GUSIP) and GUSVAP, Accelerated Oil and Gas Development Programme, enterprise development initiatives to support the training and development of a petrochemical industry through the establishment of a fund.???

?The future of inclusion and competitive advantage is IT. Our local content strategies implementation must include AI and extensive technological innovation.

MONITORING, EVALUATION AND LEARNING FROM LOCAL CAPACITY STRATEGIES

?In-depth planning (turning goals into actions) of strategies.

?Ability to design monitoring and evaluation processes appropriate to the program parameters.

?Ability to set up and manage baseline and data collection and reporting requirements.

?Knowledge of participatory methods and tools.

?Effective use of information and communication technologies.

?Ability to document and report results to various audiences.?

?Ability to reflect on results and incorporate learning back into decision making.?

PERSONAL ATTRIBUTES TO DEVELOP LOCAL CAPACITY IN WEST AFRICA

?Integrity.

?Transparency.

?Accountability.

?Continuous learning.?

?Creativity/“Outside the box” thinking. ?

?Enthusiasm and energy.

?Empathy (understanding others perspectives)

?Patience and perseverance.

CONCLUSION

?Efforts to build an effective local capabilities in the oil and gas sector in west Africa must be a continuous and united agenda for each country.?

?A high local capabilities in the oil and gas sector would bring success in using the new petroleum resources to establish an enabling environment, where resource wealth is seen across society as a means to build stable institutions, reduce social and economic inequality and drive national prosperity.

REFERENCES

?Brownfield, M.E., and Charpentier, R.R., 2006, Geology and total petroleum systems of the Gulf of Guinea Province of west Africa: U.S Geological Survey Bulletin 2207-C, 32 p.

?Nyemah, Robert. (2011). ECONOMICS OF OIL DISCOVERY IN WEST AFRICA: The Nigerian Experience. Regional Maritime University Journal Volume 1. 63.

?The Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung. (2011). Youth and Oil & Gas ?Governance in Ghana ; ISBN: 9988-572-48-4

?Enaifoghe, Andrew. (2018). Conflicts Intervention and Peace-Building Mechanisms in the West Africa Sub-Region. Journal of Economics and Behavioral Studies. 10. 300-310. 10.22610/jebs.v10i4(J).2429.

?Cingano, F. (2014), “Trends in Income Inequality and its Impact on Economic Growth”, OECD Social, Employment and Migration Working Papers, No. 163, OECD Publishing.

?Protocol A/SP1/12/01(2011) on democracy and good governanace; supplementary to the protocol relating to the mechanism for conflict prevention, management, resolution, peacekeeping and security; economic community of west African States.

?Current and future skills(2012), human resources development and safety training for contractors in the oil and gas industry: Issues paper for discussion at the Global Dialogue Forum on Future Needs for Skills and Training in the Oil and Gas Industry, Geneva, 12–13 December 2012/International Labour Office, Sectoral Activities Department. Geneva.