The 8.5 million United States dollars-project, which is expected to be completed in phases, has already received a donation of two million dollars from the Ghana National Petroleum Corporation (GNPC).

Presenting the cheque, Mr. Buah said the donation was to honour a promise  President John Dramani Mahama made in 2014 to the Management and students of UMaT to develop the University’s Petroleum Engineering Department into a School of Petroleum Studies.

He said the role of the Government and  the GNPC was to build the capacity of Ghanaians to fill the gaps in the oil and gas industry in the near future.  The Minister said to help Ghanaian engineers to be in the forefront of the  industry, the Government would continue to extend such projects to other institutions as it had done in the Petroleum and Engineering Department at Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology.

He said the recently passed Exploration Petroleum Bill had a lot of provisions that would attract investments into the country. The new law, Mr. Buah said, contained a local content fund, which was intended to support Ghanaian-owned small businesses, training and education programmes. The Minister said, “We believe that it is going to be good for our own local content aspiration and making sure Ghanaians are in the lead of the industry ultimately”.

The Corporate Affairs Manager of GNPC, Mrs. Carmen Bruce-Annan, said in the Western Region, the GNPC had invested huge sums of money in the area of education. She said at the Junior High School level, the GNPC, through its Oil and Gas Foundation, had sponsored 520 brilliant ,but needy students, whilst at the tertiary level, more than 200 students in Ghana and aboard had been sponsored to complete their Master’s programmes in Oil and Gas and other related disciplines.

Mrs. Bruce-Annan assured Ghanaians that the GNPC would ensure that they had the right skills through their own people to enable them to add knowledge and help the oil and gas sector to grow. The  Vice Chancellor, Professor Jerry Kuma, who received the cheque, on behalf of UMaT, thanked the Government and GNPC for accepting to partner the University in terms of development.

Prof Kuma said for the first phase of the project, 1.375 million US dollars, which was equivalent to 5.5 million Ghana cedis, was expected to complete the building within 18 months.