Timothy Musa Kabba, head of Sierra Leone’s Petroleum Directorate, is set on bolstering the country’s hydrocarbon’s sector.
Thanks to improved corporate budgets, an increased appetite for frontier exploration and his experience in the private sector, Kabba believes he can reassure investors and attracted responsible candidates.
Committed to transparency, Kabba is moving forward with the country’s Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative and urges only ‘serious companies’ to come forward.
Speaking at a consultative conference with stakeholders in the oil and gas industry in January, he said that Sierra Leone was committed to creating a regulatory environment that will catapult the country from potential to proven, whereby actualized oil deposits would be used for the social and economic benefit of the country.
Sierra Leone developed the Petroleum Directorate (PD) – which was established by the Petroleum Exploration and Production Act of 2011 – to facilitate the optimal exploration and development of the country’s potential petroleum resources.
“The Directorate will not function effectively without collaborating with the necessary stakeholders and getting support from the general public. The rebirth of the oil and gas companies’ interest in exploration has given rise to astronomical number of countries availing forms of tender options in an effort to capture a portion of the limited investment dollars now available,” he said.
He further stated that Sierra Leone was unwavering in its pursuit to meet the highest standards in its potential oil operations, as the country works to prove commercial probability by moving towards aggressive exploration.
Sierra Leone is located on the Atlantic coast of West Africa and announced first oil discoveries back in 2009 and its latest sizeable discovery was in 2013 by Russian owned Lukoil.
