SA oil and gas expertise able to compete against the best

SOUTH Africa has amassed adequate oil and gas expertise to service southern Africa and compete with the world’s big players in the sector, an industry executive says.

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,” he said at the gathering this week.

“Among a group of 2 000 artisans we had 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.

“We were pleasantly surprised to find that 95 percent were employed. I think that success speaks for volumes regarding our competitive edge.”

Although it ends today, Africa Oil Week is an annual event for Africa’s upstream oil and gas sector and is being attended by more than 1 500 senior decision-makers.

This year’s event was expected to attract 24 ministers of energy, 20 national oil companies and more than 100 chief executives.

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.

Adrian Strydom said Saoga, which boasts a membership of more than 240 companies, was firmly in sight of realising its aspirations of developing into an export council.