New Amanful (WR)-Ghana, Nov. 29, GNA – Sulzer Mansa, a joint venture operator in the Oil and Gas services space has commissioned a state-of-the-art rotating equipment service centre for on time accessibility by upstream industry players, energy and mining sector in the Western Region.
The service centre located at New Amanful near Apowa in the Ahanta West District.
Dr Matthew Opoku Prempeh, Minister for Energy, commissioned the facility which will also fix industry defects in rotating equipment as well as upgrades.
Mr. George Yaw Owusu, a pioneer in Ghana’s oil and gas sector and a partner of Sulzer – Mansa, acknowledged the critical need for such country-based facility that would help halt the continuous capital flight due to the lack of home-grown engineers and technicians to undertake such repair works and upgrade when the need arises.
“As a result, expatriate engineers have been taking huge sums of monies into their countries over the period…imagine if you have to pay an expatriate 2000 pounds daily wage for a month and even years”, he added.
He said the centre would give meaning to local content and participation as well as provide hope for future engineers and technicians trained in Ghana.
Investment in the workshop stood at $500, 000 dollars and over 10,000 hours of training for Ghanaian staff already spent.
The Oil and Gas Mogul said the quest to solve such a huge industry gap resulted in a search for companies which could be of help adding, “we decided to do something about the lack of local engineers and our search gave us the second largest pump manufacturer, called Sulzer engineering company and this has given birth to the dream of promoting real local participation”.
The centre had so far trained eight engineers to provide services to the oil and gas industry, mining, power plants and other manufacturing industries.
Mr. Owusu lauded government for the establishment of the Petroleum Commission to regulate the oil and gas industry as well as propagate local content and participation among industry players.
He described the local content policy as one of the best legislations in Ghana’s petroleum industry especially oil and gas, and hoped it would be applied to the mining and manufacturing industries.
“This legislation has an ownership content which gives hope to indigenous businesses in a joint venture agreement and also the need for technology transfer, a critical aspect,” Mr. Owusu added.
Mr. Alex Myers, the Manager, Sulzer Pumps, in charge of Middle East, celebrated the contributions of Mr. George Yaw Owusu in the creation of Sulzer -Mansa.
He said the partnership was in tandem with the Petroleum Commission’s vision to create lasting partnership, through local participation.
Mr. Myers said the partnership offered a good opportunity for Sulzer to come in and provide some value and create local jobs.
Sulzer, is a world-renowned equipment manufacturer and would focus on rotating equipment and heavy-duty equipment like pumps, compressors, turbines, motors and generators, which had always been shipped outside for such works or engineers imported to come and repair at huge cost.
Mansa Engineering would be providing services like crane maintenance, electrical equipment, hazardous area compliance and rotating equipment maintenance.
