US$322M earned by local companies in carved-out areas – Dr Pertab

– as Ghana-Guyana Local Content & Capacity Building Conference starts

The 40 service areas that were carved out to specifically benefit Guyanese-owned companies have generated over US$320 million in the first half of 2023, according to Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the Local Content Secretariat, Dr Martin Pertab.
He made this disclosure during the opening of the Ghana-Guyana Local Content & Capacity Building Conference on Thursday at the Marriott Hotel in Georgetown. The two-day conference, which is organised by the Ghana Chamber of Commerce Guyana (GCCG), seeks to bring together consultants and service providers in the upstream petroleum sector from both countries with the aim of preparing Guyanese to benefit from the oil boom here.
During his feature address, Dr Pertab spoke about the Local Content Secretariat’s efforts to work with oil and gas contractors and operators to ensure Guyanese are prioritised. He highlighted that there has been increasing participation by locals in opportunities that are available in the oil and gas sector. This, he noted, has resulted in more benefits including earnings for Guyanese.

“As of June 30, we have managed to retain an additional US$322 million procurement activities… Meaning, those 40 areas that we have carved out for Guyanese companies managed to attract US$322 million, which is above our projection for June 2023,” he stated.
This comes on the heels of some US$700 million in local content value recorded at the end of 2022 and of that amount, US$450 million was from the direct procurement of activities for the sector.
In addition, the Secretariat Head further revealed that employment in the oil and gas industry has increased by 6.5 per cent to 3348 since June 2022.
According to Dr Pertab, “…this has to do with the Secretariat’s open-door policy, constant engagement and interacting with contractors and licensees to ensure that Guyanese are prioritised throughout the value chain.”
While Guyana’s local content legislation was established with the help of experts from Ghana, the Secretariat Head intends to further tap into the experience of the African nation.

“We continue to hope that we tap into the experience of Ghana since they are ahead of us in terms of understanding the industry and [will] share knowledge, etc, to help strengthen local content and ensure Guyanese benefit from our patrimony,” he noted.
On this note, Dr Pertab outlined that high on the Secretariat’s agenda for 2023 is strengthening and revising the Local Content Act so that Guyanese can benefit from even more opportunities along the value chain in the oil and gas industry.
“This conference couldn’t come at a better time,” he noted while adding that they have already started the process of drafting the updated legislation and will soon go out for countrywide consultations and get feedback from locals.
Meanwhile, Chairman of the Ghana Chamber of Commerce Guyana, Gabby Otchere-Darko underscored the importance of building capacity and local content, as he offers their expertise to help Guyana. He pointed out that while local content is meaningless without the capacity of local players to deliver, the lack of such capacity should never be a legitimate excuse against guaranteeing and deepening local participation in any industry.
“Building capacity and local content in upstream oil and gas operations is perhaps the most important priority item for any oil-rich country that is seriously capturing and retaining locally as much as it possibly can of the value from its hydrocarbon resource,” he noted.

Otchere-Darko further stated that given Guyana’s infant stage of hydrocarbon production, which started in December 2019, a conference of this nature will see industry players benefitting from a nation with more than a decade of experience in implementing and enforcing local content thus resulting in rich insights, knowledge-sharing, strategy exchanges, networking and partnership agreements.
“We are here to share with you what we did right, where we went wrong and to encourage you to do better. Ghana’s commitment to Guyana is therefore real, genuine, and sincere. We are not here to exploit. We come to share with you what we have learnt. We come to listen to what you can teach us and hopefully, we can explore together the value we can each bring to our common table of interest,” the Chamber Chairman asserted.
On the other hand, CEO of the Ghana Petroleum Commission, Egbert Faibille Jnr, also used the opportunity to underscore the importance of getting citizens involved in the local petroleum industry. In Guyana’s case, he urged the training of the young population to take advantage of opportunities in the oil and gas sector, especially in the technical field.
The Ghanaian official also talked about labour localisation, explaining that this will go a long way in ensuring that profit oil is not reduced due to the high costs of the importation of experts including expatriates.
“You have lots of people with Master’s degrees in engineering, petroleum engineering and geological science and the rest. That is good. It’s like training doctors. But when you train doctors, you should recognise that the doctors don’t work in isolation. They work with nurses, laboratory technicians and so on.”
“Those are the technicians that you need to work on the FPSOs (floating production, storage and offloading vessels). Otherwise, if you bring in expatriates to do that all those add up to the cost of oil production… At the end of it all, if you employ a lot more [local] people, qualified albeit, you don’t need to bring in expatriates at a premium for your own costs… to go up or the States’ liftings to go down… because you’re paying more to expatriates. Whereas, you can get same with [local] people if you train them well,” Faibille posited. (G-8)