BY VICTOR AHIUMA-YOUNG
PETROLEUM and Natural Gas Senior Staff Association of Nigeria (PENGASSAN) has picked holes in the incessant changes in the management leadership of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) as a way to delay the growth of the oil and gas industry.
Reacting to the last week removal of the Group Managing Director (GMD) of the national oil corporation and three other executive directors, the PENGASSAN President, Comrade Babatunde Ogun, said that incessant change in the management leadership of the NNPC would affect the ongoing reforms policy in the industry.
According to him, "One of the policy thrusts in the ongoing NNPC transformation that is likely to suffer setback, according to Comrade Ogun, is the ongoing Turn Around Maintenance (TAM) and repair of the four refineries intended to put them back on stream to operate at their installed capacity."
He contended that in the past few months, "the NNPC management had been working assiduously on how to bring back the refineries and there has been results to this effect, as the Kaduna Refineries and Port Harcourt Refineries have started working progressively towards their installed capacities, while there are plans to put back the Warri Refinery."
Ogun expressed fear that the new management may abandon the ongoing TAM and repairs of the refineries, and thereby allow the government to sell those refineries as scraps.
He said: "Other vital areas where the outgoing team would have been of tremendous value is in the actualization of well articulated visions of a globally competitive national oil company in which their wealth of experience is to be tapped in kick-starting the impending Petroleum Industry law to successful takes off."
While congratulating the new management team led by the new Group Managing Director, Dr. Andrew Yakubu, the PENGASSAN president urged the team to follow the laid down reform policies and plans of the outgoing team; adding that the new team would be held accountable for any policy that could truncate the growth of the oil and gas industry.
Ogun argued that the incessant change in the management leadership of the NNPC could affect the investment drive in the oil and gas sector, saying that "no investor will want to put money in a sector that the government can wake up in one day and just decide to change the drivers of the reforms and policies that can grow such sector."
Vanguard Nigeria