…Cautions on phantom recruitment exercise
Oscarline Onwuemenyi
30 March 2017, Sweetcrude, Abuja – The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) has announced that the ongoing reform is geared towards transforming it from an oil and gas company into an integrated energy outfit with interest in power generation and transmission.
The Group Managing Director of NNPC, Dr Maikanti Baru, who disclosed this on Wednesday at the 53rd International Conference and Exhibition of the Nigerian Mining and Geosciences Society (NMGS) in Abuja, said the Corporation was ready to diversify beyond oil and gas into power generation and transmission to meet the huge demand for electricity in the country.
Speaking in a paper entitled, “Challenges and Prospects for the Diversification of the Upstream, Downstream and Frontier Basin Exploration in the Oil and Gas Sector”, Baru said NNPC had identified opportunities in the power sector and was ready to take advantage of them to transform from being a gas supplier to the power sector, into a major player, in the sector.
He said the Corporation was already working on a project to generate four Megawatts (4MW) of electricity while also exploring the possibility of investing in the transmission segment of the power sector.
The GMD explained that the Corporation’s decision to diversify into the power sector was hinged on the need to bridge the huge energy gap in the Nigerian market.
He said contrary to the impression that the poor power situation was caused by inadequate gas supply, the real problem was inadequate transmission capacity, adding that there was enough gas to generate eight gigawatts (8GW) of electricity but the transmission grid could not support such volume of power without complications.
Baru also defended the Federal Government’s plan to transform illegal refineries in the Niger Delta into legal entities for proper integration of the youth in the region. He argued that getting the youth to form consortia to set up 1000 barrels per day modular refineries would get them off criminality and create jobs.
In the upstream, he said his goal was to accelerate frontier exploration and grow crude oil reserve to 40 billion barrels from the current 37 billion.
He also challenged the geoscientists on the need to deploy more sophisticated technology and drill deeper than the current 13,000 to 15,000 feet in the Niger Delta to produce more oil.
“We have to look deeper with intensive 3D and 4D seismic surveys over the so-called matured Niger Delta. The older, the better,” he declared.
Meanwhile, the management of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation has raised the alarm on the existence of some dubious syndicates with specialty in extorting money from unsuspecting members of the public under the pretext of a purported recruitment exercise and promise of phantom job placements in the Corporation.
The Corporation in a release by its Group General Manager, Group Public Affairs Division, Mr. Ndu Ughmadu, said the NNPC at this time is not conducting any recruitment exercise noting that the Corporation would advertise vacant positions whenever it has need to embark on a recruitment exercise.
Throwing more light on the method of operation of the fake job syndicate, the NNPC explained that the group deploys various means ranging from text messages, social media platforms and forged letters to invite gullible job seekers for non-existing job interviews after ostensibly extorting money from them.
“To this end, we wish to once again appeal to members of the public, particularly unsuspecting applicants to be wary of fraudulent invitations for job interviews at the NNPC Towers. Anyone who entertains such invitations or deals with peddlers of such invitation does so at his or her own risk,” the NNPC stated.
The Corporation noted that anyone contacted for the purpose of the purported recruitment other than through advertisement duly placed by the Corporation in national newspapers, should not hesitate to report such invitations to relevant law enforcement agencies.
The statement emphasized the determination of the NNPC Management under the leadership of Dr. Maikanti Baru to sustain the prevailing gale of transparency and accountability which has witnessed the conduct of open public bidding in sourcing for contractors and suppliers of goods and services for its day-to-day operational requirements.
