More needs to be done on education and training for oil sector - US analyst

More needs to be done on education and training for oil sector – US analyst

Mar 28, 2021 News

US Analyst, Arthur Deakin

Kaieteur News – Cognizant of the fact that Guyana lacks the volume of human resources to support the growing oil and gas sector, analyst at the America’s Market Intelligence (AMI), Arthur Deakin, says that more resources are needed to train and educate Guyanese for this industry.

AMI, which is management consultant firm based in the United States of America, is known for providing its insights which unlock opportunities in Latin America via market intelligence, research and analysis. This firm has been in the business for some 30 years.

Deakin had shared these fundamental points during an interview on Kaieteur Radio in early January. There he explained, “Right now as it stands, Guyana doesn’t even have the volume to address one Floating Production Storage and Offloading (FPSO) vessel. I think that as many of these come online, what Guyana still needs is proper training for its citizens, it needs more resources invested in educating its citizens regarding the oil sector.”

Deakin was asked whether Guyana needs to ensure that it is not too ambitious with the rules and guidelines that it implements, given the limited capacity at this time. In response, he explained, “I wouldn’t say that ambition is essential to growth or for anyone. It’s just that what I think is needed is something that is realistic to the situation. You can’t have, and this is a random example, say a country has 100,000 citizens, you can’t expect them to produce the same GDP as a country with one million citizens; it’s got to be respected with the resources on the ground.”

Deakin had also stated that Guyana must establish local content laws that can evolve with the oil and gas industry. He was reminded of an article he wrote on Guyana’s local content, in which he stated that Guyana should ensure that whatever rules it is putting in place, that it does not find itself in a position where it is biting off more than it can chew: “That’s definitely an important aspect of Guyana’s oil development, this local content rule,” the analyst said, “I think that, you know, what Guyana needs is something, a law that is constantly evolving in the sense that it has certain clauses that adjust according to the sector, the level of development in the sector.”

In pointing to an example of where these evolving laws exist, Deakin referenced our neighbouring Brazil. To this he articulated that in the past with this South American giant, the original local content rules for its pre-salt oil production had disproportionate fines for non-compliance and even bottlenecks that hurt the construction of FPSOs.

“So, if you don’t have local content that can’t adjust to the development of the sector, that you know, is sort of stuck in the past,” he added.

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