The three day conference organised by the Petroleum Commission Ghana is under the theme: "Five years of Local Content: Learning from the past, preparing for the future".

It is being attended by local stakeholders and regulators from Nigeria, Gambia and Uganda.

In November 2013, the Parliament passed the petroleum local content participation Regulation, 2013(LI2204).

Mr Egbert Faibille Jnr, Acting Chief Executive Officer of Petroleum Commission, said after five years of implementing the petroleum local content and local participation regulation and the subsequent guidelines, there is the need to take a step back and see what changes could be made in the regulations and guidelines to improve upon the sector performance.

He said the Commission has identified several provisions in the regulations and guidelines that needs to be amended and would send proposals to the Ministry of Energy for consideration and submission to parliament.

 Mr Faibille Jnr said the Commission has put in place some new initiatives to enhance the growth of the oil and gas industry adding that a new local content approach, cost audit, prudent monitoring and evaluation are being implemented by the Commission to ensure that maximisation of value addition and job creation through the use of indigenous Ghanaian expertise.

He said goods and services businesses and financing were deepened for the growth and competitiveness of Ghanaian companies. The CEO said the Commission shall continue to monitor the activities as the law mandates on the basis of fairness and transparency.

"I want to assure the industry that the Commission will continue to work with all stakeholder institutions, operators and subcontractors to develop strategies to maximize the local content in all aspects of the upstream petroleum value chain.

On sanctions  for non compliance and breaches the CEO said companies that were found to be non compliant or in breach of the laws were either notified and given time to rectify the issues raised or appropriately sanctioned giving the magnitude of the breach.

"Let me remind all companies operating upstream industry that as a regulator, we are committed to the development of the industry, we shall not trivialise our mandate to ensure full compliance with the laws of the land ".

He said while the local content regulation provides certain privileges to indigenous  Ghanaian companies in terms of award of contracts, it also places certain responsibilities and obligations on them in much the same way it places on foreign contractors and subcontractors and all entities undertaking petroleum activities in the petroleum upstream  industry .

On local content cost audit, the CEO said, the Commission has adopted another approach to ensure that indigenous Ghanaian companies and the Ghanaian economy as a whole got the  just benefits of their involvement in the upstream  oil and gas space hence the auditing of most in the contracting value chain.

"To this effect, we have established a dedicated department known as the costs audit department to verify and scrutinize all payments vouchers submitted to the Commission in accordance with regulation 34/2 of LI2204. He said beginning January this year a directive was issued to all players in the industry to furnish receipts on a monthly basis evidenced purchases of goods and use of services within Ghana.

"Today am able to inform you that from these receipts alone, 697million dollars has been spent on local content purchase of goods and services as of September this year, this figure excludes receipts from Tullow Ghana Limited and its partners which we are yet to be compiled."

Mr Faibille said to achieve more in the oil and gas industry, it was  imperative to involve all stakeholders such as the industry players, academia and civil society groups  as well as governmental agencies and departments.

Present at the conference was the Mrs Gifty Eugenia Kusi, Deputy Western Regional Minister and Dr Mohamed Amin Adams, Deputy Minister to Energy in-charge of Petroleum.