Job role localisation in the oil and gas industry: A case study of Ghana

Abstract

International oil and gas companies and their contractors are increasingly required to localise job roles in order to comply with host government's local content legislations. This practice does not come without risks, costs and challenges for asset operators investing in these countries. As such, a progressive training and development process should be followed to enable oil and gas companies to replace expatriates with nationals with the relevant education, competencies and experience. This paper aims to analyse the viability of localising particular job roles, employing a systematic decision support approach for specific job roles and further investigating the result of early investment in the training and development of local people to enable oil and gas companies to reduce staffing costs by localising expatriate job roles. The proposed approach examines the case study of Ghana through engagement with appropriate stakeholders which endorse the validity of the results.

Local Content Implementation and Development in the Upstream Oil and Gas Sector in Ghana: Contemporary Issues on Policy Management

“…Employment is the main expectation of the citizenry, and seems to be the primary form of local content. But even this idea is bedevilled with numerous barriers to localizing jobs, such as limited experience, quali cations, and skills levels within the local labour market, a lack of understanding among local people of the parent organization culture, and the preference for employing expatriates by MOCs [29]. [3] has argued that Ghanaians dominate onshore administrative positions and low echelon (rating)/low skill positions offshore.…”

“…The few jobs available from upstream operations are very technical and highly skilled, such as engineering and higher management positions. This shortfall is a result of the lack of Ghanaian workers with core technical expertise in upstream oil and gas operations, and the challenge of enforcing knowledge and skills transfer from expatriate technical staff to their Ghanaian counterparts in the upstream [29]. Unless and until this is addressed, the idea of knowledge and skills transfer as required in the implementation of the local content law in Ghana will remain a mirage.…”

“…Unless and until this is addressed, the idea of knowledge and skills transfer as required in the implementation of the local content law in Ghana will remain a mirage. In order to address this, Local Training in core technical skills (e.g., drilling, engineering, geosciences, and technical management) needs to be scaled-up, and mentoring, experience building, and efforts to localise major core technical positions should be encouraged [29]. Training and education in technical expertise in the upstream sector is thus paramount [28].…”

“…If this law is properly applied, it will be the basis for upstream LCPs to maximise tangible trickle-down bene ts. [25,29] noted that the concept of local content in Ghana predates the Minerals and Mining Law, 2006 (Act, 703) and the Minerals and Mining (General) Regulations, 2012 (LI, 2173), which both introduced a local content framework to Ghana's longstanding mining sector. It was these laws that in uenced the Ministry of Energy to stipulate "local content and local participation" in petroleum activities in 2010.…”

“…This was seen as short sighted, because it ignored the potential long-term value addition to the economy [20,26]. The bene ts include localization and scaling up employment, and linkages of local content and corporate social responsibility, in the oil and gas industry [29].…”