KNUST to build students’ capacity to research into petroleum and petrochemicals
The Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) has inaugurated a five-storey building with modern laboratory to enhance capacity-building and research into petroleum and petrochemicals.
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The facility, constructed at a cost of GH¢7,601,172.03, is to build the capacity of Ghanaian students to take advantage of the local content policy and also qualify them to work with FPSO.
The building was constructed with the university’s internally-generated funds, the Government of Ghana counterpart funds of $ I million and support from the World Bank under its oil and gas capacity-building projects.
Inaugurating the facility, the Petroleum Minister, Mr Emmanuel Armah-Kofi Buah, said onshore gas-based industries in particular offered the potential to be the drivers of diversified economic growth poles.
He, however, said the challenge, as it was with many resource-rich developing countries, was how to manage the revenues and spin-off benefits from production of the depleting resources wisely so that sustainable economic development would be achieved.
Addressing potential pitfalls
“As a country, we were equally aware that we could be exposed to numerous potential pitfalls of poor governance and the risks of social unrest or environmental degradation resulting from poor sector oversight, unrealistic expectations and poor communications within and among stakeholders,” he said.
The minister indicated that it was as a result of mitigating these risks that the government employed strategies to increase the capacity of the institutions managing the sector and offer support to train the Ghanaian workforce to operate in the oil and gas sector.
The objective, among others, was to improve policy formulation and regulatory capacity of key public institutions in the oil and gas sector, while enhancing transparency and increase and strengthening local technical skills in Ghana’s emerging oil and gas sector.
Among the beneficiaries of these strategies were the Petroleum Commission, the Economic and Organised Crime Office (EOCO) and the Attorney-General’s Department where 73 members of staff, including five justices of the high court and appeals courts, were trained.
Vice Chancellor
The Vice Chancellor of KNUST, Prof. William Otoo-Ellis, noted that for the university to have started such a programme two years before Ghana discovered oil in commercial quantities in 2007 showed the foresight of the then leadership and also reflected the strategic position and contribution of the university.
He said KNUST had been upgrading the ongoing Oil and Gas Engineering and Science Education and Research courses to respond to the current needs in the industry.
He said in addition to the construction of the building, laboratories to be used for teaching and research had been refurbished, in addition to staff capacity development, retooling of the engineering library with books on oil and gas and related fields at a cost of $9 million.
The Chairman of the university council, Dr Kwame Saarah Mensah, said the move was in the right direction in line with the university’s vision to train students who would be equipped to serve the country’s needs.
He said the era where students completed school and jobs were readily available for them were over and that it was time for graduates to prove their ability to withstand competitiveness on the job market.
