ZIK GBEMRE SPEAKS ON SNEPCO’S INCITING IMPUNITY TO BUILD 17 STOREY BUILDING IN LAGOS: MATTERS ARISING
It is the height of impunity that the Shell Nigeria Exploration and Production Company (SNEPCO), has proposed a 17 story building in Lagos at the time the agitation for multinationals to compulsorily site their head offices in their operating environment is resonant.
The audacity by SNEPCO, a subsidiary of Shell Petroleum Development Company (SPDC) is very unthoughtful and inciting as it deliberately worsen the deprivation of the host communities in the South-South region where the bulk of the oil and gas are produced and exported.
However, many stakeholders fail to realise that such impunity is encouraged by Federal Government’s politicised, misplaced siting of NNPC LTD, its subsidiaries and industry regulators headquarters outside the operating environment, mainly Abuja and Lagos.
To interrogate the latest disposition by Shell, the money with which SNEPCO and other shell companies in Nigeria were established was made, over the years, from the South-South region’s oil and gas operating hub of the country and not from any region of the country.
Agreed that they were recent discoveries of oil and gas in other parts of the country but the fact remains that it is all tainted with politics. Oil and gas can’t be produced on computer simulations aimed at promoting unnecessary propaganda and media hype.
We have heard and read of some African countries including Ghana where oil and gas are found but till this moment we have not seen/felt the commercial quantity of their so-called gas and oil gaining prominence in the international oil market.
They still depend on natural gas from the South-South region of Nigeria to run their electricity plants and domestic industries. Good luck to the host if they discover oil and gas in other parts of Nigeria, but as noted by one Fred Obi, that can equate the commercial production of oil and gas from the South-South states of Nigeria.
Not until the Ukraine-Russia war broke out, many ignorant people never knew how important Russia ranks in gas production. SNEPCO operates the Bonga and the Sea Eagle EA fields that are located south west of Warri in the South-South region. The offshore production where SNEPCO is operating is hosted by the South-South states.
Can U.S and U.K claim our deep sea, of course not. Whatever 17 story building office SNEPCO, a subsidiary of Shell wants to build should be built in Warri which is closest to the Bonga and EA fields (Sea Eagle).
To espouse how NNPC and its subsidiaries and regulators induce oil multinationals preference to have headquarters outside the operating environment, these companies actually have no business in Lagos and Abuja. The three major oil export terminals are in Forcados, Bonny and Escravos, all in the South-South region of Nigeria.
And 95% of oil and gas production take place in South-South region. I challenge any person to publish the percentage of oil and gas production in other parts of the country apart from the South-South states.
Both production and exports of crude oil, condensate and gas take place in the South-South. What are NNPC LTD and other oil companies doing in Lagos and Abuja? In US, all oil companies’ corporate/head offices are located in Houston, Texas and not in Washington DC and New York City. The oil companies head offices are not even in the Austin which is the capital city of Texas State.
In Canada all oil companies’ head/corporate offices are in Calgary, Alberta Province and not in Ottawa and Toronto cities. The oil companies head offices in Canada are not even in Edmonton the capital city of Alberta Province of the country.
Why do we play politics with everything in Nigeria? What are the head offices of NNPC, Upstream Petroleum Regulatory Commission (NUPRC), NAPIMS doing in Lagos and Abuja? Who are they supervising and regulating in Abuja and Lagos? 95% of oil, condensate and gas are produced and being exported in the South-South states of Nigeria, so they have no business in Lagos and Abuja.
So, if Federal Government is not willing to do the needful, relocate, NNPC, NAPIMS, NUPRC, NOSDRA and co to the operating environment, why do they expect the International Oil Companies (IOCs) and local competitors to have their headquarters in the South-South region.
Few days after Olusegun Obasanjo was sworn in as President and Commander-In-Chief of Nigeria in 1999, he relocated the Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA) and all other public owned maritime agencies from Abuja to Lagos. His simple justification was that Abuja has no maritime business, but he biasedly refused to relocate NNPC, NAPIMS, NUPRC to Warri, Delta state which is the highest oil and gas producing city and state.
Between 1999 and 2003 I wrote Obasanjo six letters on the need to relocate NNPC, NAPIMS, DPR now rebranded NUPRC to Warri but he refused. I wrote countless letters to Goodluck Jonathan and incumbent President Muhammadu Buhari to relocate NNPC, NUPRC, and NAPIMS to the South-South states and they refused to listen.
What are they really doing in Lagos and Abuja? Of course nothing. Remaining headquartered in Abuja and Lagos is evident that they, the bloated board members and top management workers just redundantly warm their seats and drink coffee in their idle air-conditioned offices.
NNPC, NUPRC, NAPIMS may need liaison offices in Abuja and Lagos if need be, not head offices. If they now discover oil and gas in their computers/laptops in other states in the South-East and North, then they should leave the South-South region’s Oil and gas and go exploit their computer based oil and gas in those other speculated quarters.
We need social justice on this matter. No oil company’s head office, be it NNPC LTD, NAPIMS, NUPRC, has no justification being in Lagos and Abuja. The former Shell Edjeba-Warri housing estate is more than enough to accommodate all these NNPC, NAPIMS, NUPRC head offices.
It is time federal government leads by example by having NNPC, NUPRC, and NAPIMS head offices to be relocated from Lagos and Abuja to South-South region. The Federal government under the prevailing situation is deliberately denying the people of the South-South, a move to shortchange the South-South people, to cheat on the locals. Really, they have no business in Abuja and Lagos.
If NNPC LTD, NAPIMS, NUPRC and all other subsidiaries should relocate to Warri, then all other oil companies will follow suit. One doesn’t need to campaign and lobby Shell, Chevron, Mobil to move their operational and head offices to the South-South states. Warri is by the Atlantic Ocean and has every natural environment needed for oil and gas business to thrive.
The problem really is not Shell, Chevron, Mobil and other oil companies using Lagos and Abuja as their head and operational offices. The real issue is Federal Government not directing NNPC LTD, NAPIMS, and NUPRC to relocate to Warri in Delta state.
If NNPC, NAPIMS and NUPRC should move their head and operational offices to Warri, other oil companies will have no option left than to move to Warri. It is time the NNPC, NUPRC, NAPIMS, SNEPCO, Chevron, Mobil heads/corporate offices are relocated from Lagos and Abuja to the South-South.
What is SNEPCO head and operational office doing in Lagos. The impacts of the operations of SNEPCO in the deep-sea of Bonga is on Delta state and not Lagos and Abuja. All of this must be right.
Those elected as Delta Governors since 1999 till date are obviously ignorant or being just malicious. They are only interested in going to Abuja to collect monthly allocation from the Federation Account.
I am surprised SNEPCO is throwing open their scholarships without regard to the South- South people that bear the negative impacts of their operations.
NNPC LTD and its subsidiaries like NUPRC, NAPIMS, NGC, NPDC, etc. are scam. What do they need those bogus offices in Abuja and Lagos for? What are they doing in that bogus NNPC Towers in Abuja? The redundant management and staff with flamboyantly meaningless official titles and designation comfort zone offices fumbling with computers and drinking coffee over duplicated functions. Every month they receive compassionate salaries.
The oil, gas and condensate are majorly produced and exported in the Forcados, Bonny, Escravos, Bonga field platform export terminals. The few fields supposedly owned by NPDC are operated by indigenous oil companies that have some stakes in them.
The IOCs and indigenous oil companies which produce the crude oil, gas and condensate without unnecessary interference can refine, export and remit money to the Federal Government through the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN).
All Federal Government should do is to have technical and finance auditors to monitor the sales domestically and externally. Those who felt adding an “L” to NNPC would make it efficient are part of the collaborators shortchanging the country. The more NNPC is expanded in dirty politics to accommodate selfish interest of power brokers, the more sleaze, and more leakages NNPC is suffering.
Nigerian Gas Company (NGC) is another lame duck that has no function at all with redundant staff filtering and sharing free money. NGC has no function one bit. They only placed meters to read the gas IOCs and indigenous oil companies produce. The gas the IOCs and indigenous oil companies produce is what they lay claim to as NGC gas.
Why wasting money to maintain these bogus NGC offices and their redundant personnel that have no relevance to the economy but only create avoidable costs and liabilities for the nation. The federal government should carry out reform and scrap these NNPC and its subsidiaries.
Will the President-Elect, Bola Tinubu be able to correct this deliberate misnomer of Federal Government on oil and gas matters? I fear if Tinubu will have the political will and honesty to effectively ensure the relocation of NAPIMS, NUPRC from Lagos and NNPC from Abuja to Warri. Because of the huge tax the oil companies headquartered in Lagos pay to the state government, Tinubu may not be bold enough to order their relocation to Warri in the South-South region.
This is my fear because he needs the tax money to swell Lagos state treasury. Time will tell if Tinubu will be impartial in his administration. He can’t rob the South South states to pay Lagos his home state.
Will Tinubu allow sea ports in the South-South to function at full capacity utilisation. Time will tell if Tinubu will be a tribal president or he will be courageous enough to right the wrongs in this nation. No country can develop with all these wastages and leakages.
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