Chief Executive Officer and Managing Director of GOIL PLC, Edward Abambire Bawa, has called on Ghana’s downstream regulator, the National Petroleum Authority (NPA), to make technology transfer a condition for licensing new investors in the petroleum sector.
Speaking at the 7th Ghana International Petroleum Conference (GHiPCON) in Accra, Bawa said the centrality of the issue was how licences are issued.
“The centrality of it is how we license. Our licensing regime must have a situation where these things are captured when issuing the licence,” he said.
“The licence should be able to give measurable ways in assessing how technical know-how is transferred.”
Bawa said regulators should focus on outcomes rather than inputs when evaluating joint ventures between local and foreign firms.
“If you were to go into a joint venture with a foreign company that has the technology and the capital, you need to be able to clearly indicate that in the course of that relationship there are measurable ways in which the technology that has been brought is transferred and it will remain,” he said.
He added that companies often cite the number of conferences and training programmes as evidence of technology transfer, but that does not guarantee competence.
“You can have four or five training programmes, you can expose people to technology and what have you. But in doing that you only can talk about statistics and numbers.
But in reality people do not have the competence. People are not familiar with the technology that is being used in the industry,” Bawa said.
He urged the NPA to emulate the upstream sector, where the licensing regime already sets out requirements for technology transfer.
“It boils down to licensing and how we structure the licensing. If we can do that very well and the regulator is on top of his job, trust me we will be able to ensure. This is a problem that is even found in the upstream, and I believe that in the upstream there are examples that can be taken,” he said.
Bawa said such a requirement would help ensure technology retention for local staff working with foreign operators in Ghana’s downstream sector.
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