CAPE TOWN, Nov. 7 (Xinhua) -- South Africa has amassed adequate oil and gas expertise that will enable the country to serve both Southern Africa and the rest of the world, head of South African Oil and Gas Alliance (SAOGA) said on Thursday.
South Africa also has sufficient capacity to compete with the rest of the world's big players in the sector, SAOGA Acting Chief Executive Officer Adrian Strydom told the ongoing Africa Oil Week (AOW) in Cape Town.
SAOGA forms part of the 15 local oil and gas companies housed in the South African National Pavilion that is provided by the Department of Trade and Industry to profile the country's oil and gas product offerings during the AOW.
Strydom said SAOGA had been developing capacity in the industry throughout the years, particularly artisans, and had strategically developed capacity in petroleum engineering and petroleum scientists.
"We have just completed a tracking study to determine how successful we were in developing our artisans," he said.
Amongst a group of 2,000 artisans SAOGA had developed from 2017 to date, 95 percent of those artisans were employed, according to Strydom.
"I think that success speaks for volumes regarding our competitive edge," he said.
SAOGA boasts a membership of more than 240 companies that play in the oil and gas related services sector.
Strydom said the organization is firmly in sight of realizing its aspirations of developing into an export council.
"By being a national organization we will be able to better serve our members. With an additional sustainability base that comes with being an export council and some of the resources that come with that we will be able to better serve that purpose and serve our industry better," Strydom said.
"I think by being an export council it would make a huge difference in our effectiveness and I believe we can multiply the effect of what we are doing and we can be more streamlined,"he added.
The AOW is a leading event for Africa's upstream oil and gas sector that is attended by more than 1,500 senior oil and gas decision-makers from the oil and gas value-chain.
This year's event attracted 24 ministers of energy, 20 national oil companies and more than 100 CEOs.
