After eight years in the Oil and Gas servicing business, he resigned in 2005 to train in a different profession in order to get closer to his family. In 2006, Dr Oppong, graduated from the University of Surrey (UK), as a Medical Physicist and worked with ASTOR Care and Nursing Agency in the UK, as a Clinical Assistant, measuring patients’ Haemodynamics variables and assisting in quality assurance and quality control of medical equipment for two years before retuning to join the University of Ghana as a lecturer in 2008. He was an associate member of the Institute of Physics (IOP) and Engineering in Medicine, associate member of the American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG), and a member of the Petroleum Exploration Society of Great Britain (PESGB). He lectured Medical Imaging and Medical Physics among others at the Biomedical Engineering Department at University of Legon for four years before moving permanently to the Earth Science Department in 2011. He obtained his PhD in Geophysics from KNUST in 2014 and lectured at the Department of Earth Science from 2009 to 2018 where Dr. Oppong joined the Petroleum Commission, Ghana on secondment till 2020 and later employed permanently as the Manager of the Geosciences Department of the Commission till now. His areas of research include Petroleum Geophysics and Medical Physics.
Dr. Isaac Oppong
Manager, Geosciences - Petroleum Commission
Dr Isaac Amankwah Oppong completed his B.Sc. Physics degree in 1991 from the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Ghana (KNUST), and did his National Service at the Technology Transfer Center, a department of the Council for Scientific and Research Council, CSIR in Ghana, where he was in-charge of a UNDP Project for Computer Awareness Programme for Secondary Schools and Polytechnics in 1992. After a year of service, he returned to KNUST in 1992 for a master’s program in Physics, and worked as a demonstrator, and a Teaching Assistant.
After the first year in KNUST, he won the Royal Dutch Fellowship Award to pursue a postgraduate course in Exploration Geophysics at the International Aerospace Survey and Earth Sciences, ITC, at the Technical University of Delft, The Netherlands. Upon completion in 1994, he was admitted to University of Greenwich in the United Kingdom in 1995 to pursue a course in M.Sc. Petroleum Geology and Geophysics.
Just before he completed the M.Sc. Petroleum course in 1997, he got employed as a trainee Seismic Engineer, by the Western Geophysical Company, formerly called Western Atlas International, which later merged with Baker Huges in the late 90s, which subsequently merged with the Schlumberger Company, the World’s leading Oil and Gas Servicing Company, in 2001. After his six months probation, he was permanently employed where he worked his way through internal examinations and demonstrations to attain the position of Senior Seismic Engineer in the Schlumberger House at Gatwick in the United Kingdom. Dr Oppong was involved in the training of new members of his group and in 2003, he won an award (Can-Do Award) for his expert AWK programming to increase production. Dr Oppong has processed data from around the world more especially land and Marine data from Europe, South America, and most African Countries. He was among the group who processed Angola Block 17 which has since early 2000, been among the largest oilfields in Africa.