CAPE TOWN - South Africa has amassed adequate oil and gas expertise to service southern Africa and compete with the rest of the world’s big players in the sector, an industry executive has said.
Acting chief executive of the South African Oil & Gas Alliance (SAOGA), Adrian Strydom, told this week's Africa Oil Week conference in Cape Town that his organisation had been developing capacity in the industry for years, particularly artisans.
“We have just completed a tracking study to determine how successful we were in developing our artisans. Amongst a group of 2 000 artisans we have developed from 2017 to date, we went back and surveyed a sample of 160 young people who had been trade tested as artisans to find out how they were doing," he said.
"We were pleasantly surprised to find that 95 percent of those artisans were employed. I think that success speaks volumes regarding our competitive edge."
The November 4-8 Africa Oil Week, an annual event for Africa’s upstream oil and gas sector, is being attended by more than 1 500 senior decision makers. This year’s event is expected to attract 24 ministers of energy, 20 national oil companies and more than one hundred chief executive officers.
SAOGA is one of 15 local oil and gas entities at the South African national pavilion hosted by the trade and industry department to profile the country’s products.
Strydom said SAOGA, which boasts a membership of more than 240 companies, was firmly set to realise its aspirations of developing into an export council.
“That is the focus and I feel that we can better achieve our mandate as an export council. At this present moment, we are a joint action group that is based in the Western Cape. By being a national organisation we will be able to better serve our members,” Strydom said.
“With an additional sustainability base that comes with being an export council and some of the resources that come with that we will be able to better serve that purpose and serve our industry better."
We will also be able to complement what the (trade and industry department) is doing to a greater degree because we can plan ahead in terms of what we do, where we do it and how we do it. I think by being an export council it would make a huge difference in our effectiveness and I believe we can multiply the effect of what we are doing and we can be more streamlined,” he added.
- African News Agency (ANA)
