She said the Shipyard was strategically located to help support the operations of the oil and gas sector of the country. Mrs Torkornoo said with an investment of about 80 million dollars, the Shipyard would be able to develop its two docks and the fabrication facilities.

She said the facility was capable of handling all manner of vessels for dry docking activity, with two docks; one being the biggest dry-dock facility in West and Central Africa.  Mrs Torkornoo said 30 to 40 million dollars out of the 80 million dollars would be needed to develop the dry-dock while 40 million dollars would be needed for the fabrication facility.

Speaking at a Ghana Day Event, organised alongside the just ended Offshore North Sea Conference and Exhibition in Stavanger, Norway, Mrs Torkornoo said within the upstream operations in Ghana, the Tema Shipyard played a critical role.

She told the enthusiastic members of the Norwegian business community that; “At the Tema Shipyard, we are doing ship berths and refitting, dry-docking, and all vessels that are servicing upstream operations.”

She particularly urged Aker Energy, a Norwegian firm that took over Hess Ghana’s stake in the Deepwater Tano Cape Three Point in June, this year, to take up the Shipyard and develop it as a “commercial responsibility” to ensure linkage to the upstream operations.

Mrs Torkornoo said when the fabrication facility was developed for heavy steel engineering then the benefits of the upstream oil and gas operations would be realised. She said it would also lead to the development and training of local staff, which could employ more than 3,000 to 4,000 skills, leading to generation of taxes and facilitation of socio-economic development.

Mrs Torkornoo said in developing the Shipyard facility, Ghana would have a competitive advantage over Singapore or South Korea. “The facility we are talking about is in the East and so travelling or shipping modules from Singapore or South Korea to Ghana will definitely be cheaper to ship from Tema to the Western Region”.

In a related development, a team from the Petroleum Commission that led some 40 local firms from Ghana on a Trade Mission to Norway, interacted with their Norwegian counterpart, the Norwegian Petroleum Directorate, to acquaint themselves with the operations and to renew collaborations.

Under the Oil for Development Project introduced in 2007 by the late Kofi Annan, a former General-Secretary of the United Nations, Ghana partnered Norway, one of the biggest oil producing countries, to help in developing the oil sector with the right regulations and technical expertise.