September 2009 Newsletter

It’s been a busy few weeks for me as I continue the process of settling in at SAOGA, getting to know the people in the industry and, especially important, the companies and their people who constitute our member base.  While I’ve greatly enjoyed getting to meet and know the wonderful and diverse group of people involved in our industry, it hasn’t necessarily been an easy or encouraging time.  Energy levels around SAOGA are low and many can’t point to tangible ways in which the organization has added value to their businesses which is, after all, the ultimate test of our effectiveness.  This needs to change.
 
My thoughts at the moment are focused on revisiting and defining SAOGA’s mission and developing a strategy to carry it out.  Central to this is my belief that our broad mission of promoting the development of South African-based industry serving upstream needs is best achieved by ensuring that we have strong, healthy companies. Strong companies will lead to a strong local industry and that will be good for all of us.  Accordingly, I think that our core focus needs to be on helping member companies grow their businesses by: connecting them to new opportunities and markets, linking them with local and foreign partnering opportunities, helping them build capacity and, where necessary, working to align our public sector partners to the industry’s needs. The details still need to be worked out and I expect they will evolve and change over time but what is clear is this – SAOGA will become more member-centric in its approach and I will actively measure success in terms of the actual and perceived benefits to our members.  On that note I have also been rethinking our existing approach to membership. 
 
Our current two-tier membership process is quite complicated to understand and confuses the issue of membership with our objective of trying to support the development of the international standards of performance and competence that are necessary to compete in the global oil and gas market.  I would like to separate the two issues by moving to a single standard membership that makes it easy to join and is open to any organization who wants to join and take advantage of the services and opportunities we offer (subject to paying the modest joining fee of course!).  One of the things we will then do is encourage (and support where possible) companies to attain relevant international certifications and standards of operation, and we will find ways of publicly recognizing companies who do, so that certifications and capability is transparent to those who do business with our companies.  So, an open, embracing approach to membership is the way forward; our responsibility is to make it a worthwhile investment for you.

To end I’d like to plug a couple of things.  I have been "twittering" (not as much as I would like) and at least a couple of people have found it useful to get news and updates this way – I’d encourage you to check it out (http://twitter.com/saoga_ceo).  We are also in the process of launching our Oil & Gas directory which is a public listing of companies in the sector - we will be making more announcements on this in the near future so stay tuned..... Members automatically get a basic listing in the directory but others can be listed on a paid basis - please contact us if you'd like to be listed and we can send more details.