– To down tools if discussions with NNPCL, Eni fail
Mkpoikana Udoma
Port Harcourt —
The Petroleum and Natural Gas Senior Staff Association of Nigeria, PENGASSAN has vowed to down tools and shutdown all oil field locations, if the ongoing discussions with NNPC Ltd. and Italy’s Eni, on the sale of Agip and the fate of oil workers, yield no positive result.
This is coming on the heels of the 100percent acquisition of NAOC by Oando Plc, without allegedly addressing the welfare and benefits of the workers and without due process; the development which has led to several protests by members of PENGASSAN since the beginning of September 2023.
Speaking, the National President of PENGASSAN, Comrade Festus Usifo, announced that due process must be followed by NAOC, and workers will not be rolled over to Oando Plc, without adequate development plan or severance package for those who have laboured so many years for Agip.
Usifo, speaking in a live television interview monitored in Port Harcourt, said some of its members have worked for Agip for over 30 years and some were at the point of retirement, who may just want to be paid their severance package to go home.
He said, “What we are doing now is conversation, consultation and discussion with the Agip management of Agip. If they insist not to comply with the right thing, of course they know the consequences, because we will withdraw our members from the respective field locations.
“The question is, the liabilities that have been incurred by Agip; the pension, gratuity you are supposed to pay these people does Oando Plc have the financial wherewithal to be able to meet these financial obligations to our members?
“As a patriotic association, we are also asking Oando Plc, you are buying Agip what is your development plan? because the future of our members depends on that company, if the company folds, then our members will go home.
“If we are not satisfied with the plan, we will say pay us our obligations, we do not want to be transited into Oando Plc, pay us our benefits. I have worked for you for 25years or 30 years, pay me my severance and let’s discuss a special separation package so that I go. If I now want to join Oando, it would be based on my discretion; anything I see I will take, but the years I have put in Agip, NAOC must settle me.”
The TUC President further disclosed that indigenous oil firms do not have the capacity to manage and sustain production like the international oil companies, who according to him, inject funds into managing their assets.
He emphasised that Agip must sit down and have a conversation with their members (oil workers) working in the oilfields and locations, as well as ensure their demands are met.
“When the IOCs where managing most of these assets, they had the funds to inject into it for a sustained production, which I know will be the real challenge we would be having now, and these are the discussions we are also fronting with Oando, especially operations like stimulation and well enhancement, so that the wells will not start declining.
“We have people who are working in the oilfields and locations; you can not bring people who are dissatisfied to be running your assets it does not work like that. So who is going to run these locations? Is it the management of Oando Plc that will just come there and start pressing the buttons? No, you need these employees. So you must sit down and have conversation with them.”
Meanwhile, members of PENGASSAN, Agip branch, have held series of prayer sessions in various NAOC offices and field locations across Delta, Rivers, Imo and Bayelsa States, for God’s protection and strength, saying that the sale of Agip has unleashed a storm of uncertainty, fear and despair on them.
The workers are using the prayer sessions to seek God’s intervention and pressed on the regulators to prevail on NAOC to follow due process on the engagement of workers in the acquisition of NAOC by Oando Plc, as well as for the Nigerian labour laws to be enforced rigorously to protect the interests of Nigerian workers during the transition.
