Presentation

'New business opportunities related to oil and gas exploration in Sri Lanka':

The National Chamber of Commerce of Sri Lanka will hold a seminar on "New business opportunities related to oil and gas exploration in Sri Lanka" on March 14 from 3.00 pm to 4.30 pm at the National Chamber Auditorium, D R Wijewardana Mawatha, Colombo 10. The Petroleum Resources Development Secretariat (PRDS) has advised the business community that petroleum exploration activities in Sri Lanka may increase significantly in the future, and has requested key Chambers to conduct discussions with their membership for ideas on increasing their participation in them. These ideas will be consolidated, discussed, and where feasible applied towards addressing the government's wish to increase local content in the industry.

Local content can be measured in many ways, ranging from short term employment and commercial activity, to long term knowledge transfer and capacity building. The PRDS's objective is to manage Local Content Policy in successive Petroleum Resource Agreements to ensure that the industry can be sustained with primarily Sri Lanka resources within the shortest possible time. The PRDS functions under the President.

Saliya Wickramasuriya, Director General of the PRDS will address the business community on the current status and future potential of petroleum exploration in Sri Lanka.

He will also explain in more detail the structure of the industry and the different categories of goods and services in the market, within each of which may exist opportunities for Sri Lankan businesses.

Apart from the exploration process itself, mid and downstream areas such as pipelines, storage and transport will be touched on, along with support services such as banking, insurance, engineering design, safety training and equipment, aviation services, equipment certification, chemicals, cement, construction, fabrication and warehousing and any others that lend themselves to immediate Sri Lankan participation.

In addition, the new initiatives launched by our Universities to increase the human resource pool in the upstream sector will also be discussed. Full involvement of all stakeholders is essential to meet the challenges of successful transition to a petroleum economy, and the Sri Lankan business community could obtain first hand information that may help them plan and play their key role more effectively.