Over 250 individual local suppliers in the oil and gas industry have
undergone a one-day virtual training in business ethics and compliance hosted by
the National Upstream Petroleum Business Academy of the Petroleum
Commission. The training was organized by the Petroleum Commission in
collaboration with Tullow Ghana limited, to give indigenous suppliers, an in-depth
understanding of the ethical requirements for conducting business in the industry.
Topics including the importance of ethics and compliance, principles of compliance,
key anti-corruption controls, sanctions, trade restrictions, human rights and labour
conditions were delivered by industry experts from Tullow Ghana with practical
examples and country-specific context to give participants a better appreciation of
the subjects and their correlation with business practices and the expectation of the
industry.
Speaking on the need for local capacity development and knowledge transfer, Chief
Executive Officer of the Petroleum Commission, Mr. Egbert Faibille underscored
the importance of good corporate governance, ethics and transparency in the
upstream sector and the promotion of shared prosperity. Mr. Faibille said factors
such as poor corporate governance and lack of capacity constitute some of the
significant barriers that still hinder indigenous Ghanaian companies from
participating in the country’s upstream petroleum industry. He was however grateful
to Tullow Ghana for the collaboration with the National Upstream Petroleum
Business Academy of the Petroleum Commission for the delivery of this workshop
which aims at addressing critical knowledge gaps and information asymmetry that
limit the competitiveness of indigenous Ghanaian companies. Mr. Faibille said
“This workshop as I mentioned earlier is being organized in collaboration with
Tullow Ghana. Such collaboration will be extended to other companies in future
workshops to attain maximum outcome.”
In his opening remarks, the Managing Director for Tullow Ghana, Wissam Al-
Monthiry underscored the importance of the training saying, “indeed, these
development initiatives have become even more important as Tullow Ghana
business focuses on delivering maximum value from the Jubilee and TEN fields
under the Ghana Value Maximization Plan”. Under the plan, Tullow will invest a
further $4billion over the next ten (10) years to deliver increased production in the
Ghanaian fields. Mr. Al-Monthiry said, Tullow is committed to partnerships with
industry stakeholders to share knowledge and help develop the capacity of local
businesses to enable their participation in contracts. He reiterated Tullow’s
alignment with the national local content development agenda through consistent
training programmes for local suppliers and increasing local supplier participation in
Tullow operations under the Value Maximisation Plan.
Following the training, participants are expected to gain industry knowledge that will
improve their preparedness for bids and make them more competitive in the oil and
gas industry globally. Beyond satisfying bid requirements, the training was
designed to help local suppliers incorporate global best practices in good
governance into their operations.
Mr. Faibille and Mr. Al-Monthiry both entreated participants to provide feedback
which will be crucial for the enhancement of the training initiatives of the Academy.
