New PENGASSAN president to focus on job security, local content implementation

Oil workers

The newly elected president of the Petroleum and natural Gas Senior Staff Association of Nigeria (PENGASSAN) Comrade Francis Olabode Johnson has said that the union will focus more on ways of ensuring job security and decent jobs and employment conditions for its members in the next three years.
Addressing some PENGASSAN members after he emerged as the President of the Association during the just concluded Fourth Triennial National Delegates Conference of the union in Abuja, Comrade Johnson, said that none of the sub-sector of the workers’ union in the oil and gas industry would be allowed to go into extinction.
He stated that the Services sector, which was endangered and threatened by extinction, would not die as job security would be priority of his regime.
Comrade Johnson noted that the Nigerian Oil and Gas Industry Development Act 2010, defines local content as “the quantum of composite value added to or created in Nigeria through utilization of Nigerian resources and services in the petroleum industry resulting in the development of indigenous capability without compromising quality, health, safety and environmental standards,” adding that the Act was framed within the context of growth of Nigerian entrepreneurship and the domestication of assets to fully realize Nigeria’s strategic developmental goals.
“But how do we derive maximum benefits from oil and gas operations through optimal use of local competences and resources as practiced in Indonesia, Brazil, Norway and Venezuela, for example. Although these countries started oil exploration and production activities after Nigeria they have largely recorded remarkable success in their efforts to grow the local content in this strategic industry. Why has Nigeria been unable to surmount her own challenges?
“As noble as local content policy initiative appears, the objectives remained unrealized. In no distance time, we will agitate for the expansion of the upstream and downstream sectors of the oil and gas industry, the diversification of the sources of investment into the sector such that some of the funds would begin to come from local sources, the promotion of indigenous participation and the fostering of technological transfer.
“We will also put pressure on the government for increase in oil and gas reserves through aggressive exploration; employment generation for all categories of Nigerians; increased production capacity, and perhaps most importantly, the integration of the oil and gas industry into the mainstream economy through local refineries and petrochemicals,” he said.
The new PENGASSAN president observed that non-adherence to the principle of expatriate quota and the absence of a definitive provision for job security in the NOGID Act are major defects that can hamper the implementation of the law.
He revealed that a blueprint that would address the vulnerability of the services sector has been developed and will soon be made available to the National Assembly, adding that the enforcement of the local content Act as well as other reforms to safeguard jobs of PENGASSAN members that must be done.
Comrade Johnson therefore said that the panacea for resolving the myriads of challenges facing the union revolves round a concerted effort by all members.