Senior High School students participating in a two-day exhibition on Ghana’s oil and gas industry have called for increased opportunities for Ghanaians to play dominant role in the production and management of the resource.

They want the government and industry players to ensure that more Ghanaians are trained and empowered to be active participants in budding industry.

“There are a lot of foreigners in this company and the oil drilled here is for Ghana, so it is supposed to be the Ghanaians who have the dominant participation in it, not foreigners; so as a Ghanaian I can see that we have a lot to do”, observed Owusu Rashid of the Adventist Senior High School.

The Jubilee Partners have been sharing information with students from 19 secondary technical schools in Kumasi on their activities in the oil exploration, as part of efforts to better manage expectations of Ghanaians.

The National Tour of the oil exhibition exposes the public to the process of oil formation, drilling and production in the Jubilee Oil field.

Some students who spoke to Luv Biz Report described the exposure as “insightful” and “educative” though they are unhappy with the dominance of expatriate workers in the industry.

Andrews Nii Awule Lartey, a science student at Prempeh College, has interest to pursue Petroleum Engineering at the university. He hopes this will afford him the opportunity to work in the oil sector, but he is “not too sure” if there will be enough prospects to carry through his career at the Jubilee Fields.

However, Communications Manager for Tullow Ghana, Gayheart Mensah says there are measures and interventions for local manpower development in the industry.

He said with the launch of the Tullow Group Scholarship Scheme, 50 students will be sponsored each year to pursue post-graduate studies in the UK in oil and gas related industry.

“In addition to that we are taking a long term perspective about developing local capability, so while we are offering the scholarships, we‘re also trying to develop various levels of partnerships with institutions in this country, [like] the Tarkoradi Polytechnic, the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology… in that case instead of 50 [students],you might even have double that number benefiting from that scholarship”, stated Mr. Mensah.

The road show by the Jubilee Partners is in response to the need to deepen understanding and ensure transparency around Ghana’s oil find. The partners include Tullow Oil, Anadarko, Kosmos Energy, Sabre Oil and the EO Group and the Ghana National Petroleum Corporation (GNPC).

Story by Kofi Adu Domfeh