Luanda - The Law on Local Content for the oil sector published two years ago lacks specific rules regarding the hiring of Angolan companies to provide goods and services to the oil and gas industry.
The legal tool obliges giants of the oil sector to hire national companies and citizens to provide goods and services, however, it does not define how to measure, supervise and implement it.
According to the head of the Executive Committee of PetroAngola( national oil and gas consulting company), Patrício Quingongo, the lack of rules regarding this issue is also keeping opportunities away from local companies.
"The Law was created two years ago, but the absence of this component, the regulation, is creating inertia in the sector, besides preventing the full implementation of the legal tool", explained the source.
Mr Quingongo stressed that Local Content is about the sovereignty of Angolans in the oil and gas industry.
The PetroAngola company presented Wednesday at the second Annual Conference on Local Content, an implementation model of the law with the aim to fill the gap detected.
The forum explained how some steps should be taken to complete the current law, which from the expert's point of view does not need to be revised.
Such necessary additions are linked to the development of an implementation methodology for the Local Content Law which has to be feasible for the national economy, business environment, technical capacity of companies and national citizens.
In addition to the implementation methodology, PetroAngola also suggested a measurement methodology to assess the growing extent of the local content.
To this methodology is also added monitoring to help understand the degree of compliance regarding the implementation of local content by the players in the oil and gas industry.
The PetroAngola's representative underscored the need to look for internal capacity, since one of the problems identified in the country is the lack of Know-how and poor financial capacity of the companies.
The National Oil, Gas and Biofuels Agency (ANPG) published in 2021 a list containing 400 goods and services supplied to oil companies that the oil block operators must hire exclusively or by preference from Angolan companies.
The measure aims to ensure the creation of a national industry that supports oil operations based in Angola, since foreign firms are currently the largest number to provide goods and services to foreign multinationals in the country. The practice leads to large sums of oil revenues to be exported.
In 2021, as an example in terms of revenues generated from the provision of goods and services, Angola kept only 3 percent (300 million US dollars) from over 13. 3 billion US dollars, meaning that 97 percent of the amount generated was taken abroad.
The Local Content of the Oil Sector is one of the objectives foreseen in the National Development Plan, PDN/ 2018-2022, which aims to promote and boost the supply chain of goods and services with the purpose of increasing the participation of national companies in the oil sector.
