Local Content Policies and Cameroon’s Petroleum Industry: Emerging Challenges and the Way Forward

Abstract

Although oil exploration and production has been going on in Cameroon, one of the greatest challenges has been how Cameroon can maximise the potential benefits from oil to avoid the under-development path that hits other oil producing countries. This challenge sprout as a result of lack of specialised skills in the development of her oil industry. Thus, the promotion of LCPs in her oil industry is seen as an ideal means to enhance skills and technology transfer in the oil sector. It is in this light that this paper seeks principally to examine how LCPs have been effectively implemented within the Petroleum industry in Cameroon which will go a long way to enhance economic development. To achieve this principal objective, the paper aims specifically to examine the opportunities that the State and the local oil producing communities could derive from a viable LCP framework within the oil industry in Cameroon. The findings of this research reveal that in as much as there exists a regulatory frame work to promote the implementation of the local content policies in the oil industry, the lacunae of the Petroleum Code, weak monitoring committee, limited human resource capacity and insufficient capital has been the major drawbacks for the ineffective implementation of the local content policies in the oil industry in Cameroon. It is in this respect that this paper strongly advocates for the government to define the quantitative, qualitative, reliable and verifiable indicators of local content, outlining a detailed schedule of the implementation of the local content requirements, formulating sanctions via a gradual regime of sanctions for non-compliance with local content obligations, strengthening the capacities of the national workforce as well as suppliers and other national service providers on jobs related to oil exploitation, involving both the local and indigenous communities in the definition and formulation of the objectives of the local content, creating a commission to monitor and evaluate the execution of the fiscal obligations and local content and reinforcing technical education to curb with technology transfer as a means to address the ineffective implementation of the local content policies in the oil sector of Cameroon.