Kota Kinabalu: Petronas commends bosses of Sabah oil and gas services and equipment (SOGSE) firms for their genuine progressive growth in the Sabah oil and gas industry market share.
However, the leadership of the national petroleum giant also cautions them against using political influence including support letters (which will have no bearing on outcomes) to lobby for technical oil and gas tender work contracts, as a rent-seeking outfit agency of other firms.
“Yeah. Support letter is unacceptable. It works nothing in any technical bid proposal. It works nothing. In fact, it will increase the risk assessment of your company because you are using this supporting method,” said Razali Kamin (pic), emphasizing safety first as a professional imperative.
Razali is the Petronas GP Senior General Manager, Enterprise Category & Industry shaping, Group Procurement.
“For complex jobs, non-Sabah companies must have, and it is a must for them to have a partner in Sabah. And the partner must have real working people doing work. No Alibaba arrangement.”Razali was a speaker at the “Realising Sabah OGSE’s future: From Potential to Readiness” session of the Oil & Gas Services and Equipment Conference and Exhibition Sabah 2026.
The event themed: “Powering Sabah as the Next Energy Frontier” was held at the Sabah International Convention Centre on June 4, 2026.
Currently, Sabah has 377 OGSE firms registered with Petronas working and serving the petroleum operations with a daily output of some 300,000 barrels of oil per day.
Razali said that Petronas actually collaborated with the local financial institution to support local oil and gas services and equipment players.
“We’re actually collaborating with them in terms of providing financial support to qualified local companies. We have nine financial institutions which have already disbursed to the vendors about RM2.3 billion.
“This is an opportunity for local companies to grab. Go to the institutional bank and see how they can get financial support,” he said of the need for them to improve, upscale and expand their services not just locally but also strive to be competitive regionally, and internationally. “It will not be permanent. One day, we have to release you and you have to be independent. So, this is the opportunity for us to make sure that you take and grab the opportunity that we have been providing in supporting you to be competitive locally, regionally, and internationally.”The session was moderated by Ezwan Zakaria who said stressed to the Sabah oil and gas services and equipment (OGSE) firms that: “It’s now time to get into action, find the right partner, build capability, work on human resource talent management and also take the opportunity on the financing that’s provided.
“We need to upskill, we need to ramp up the capability of Sabah’s OGSE players, and there’s a lot of support that’s provided by the state, by Petronas, by federal to actually work together to improve the capability for Sabah,” he said, with the hope that the OGSE audience took serious note of the insights shared to guide them to strategically plan and develop further, to transition into high-value scopes and more importantly high-tech and complex capabilities.
