Daily Independent Online.
*
Thursday, July 08, 2004.
Elf resumes oil production, resolves disputes with PENGASSAN
By Charles Okonji
and Bimbo
Kesington, Lagos
Elf Petroleum
Nigeria Limited, a Total upstream company in Nigeria, on Wednesday resolved its
conflicts with Petroleum and Natural Gas Senior Gas Association of Nigeria
(PENGASSAN) over the company’s expatriate quota policy.
At the meeting held
in Port Harcourt, the two parties, it was gathered, agreed to go back to
production as the management of the company promised to address all the issues
raised by PENGASSAN.
Elf’s branch
of PENGASSAN was agitated that the company’s Managing Director, Mr.
George Buresi, delineated Elf into core business and support services without
any significant Nigerian participation in the core business. The union said
this was deliberate so as to sideline Nigerians.
At two pervious
meetings they called where the contending issues would have been resolved,
Buresi and his deputy, who is also an expatriate, did not attend.
Consequently, the
meeting was reconvened on Wednesday, where all the principal actors including
the managing director were present and the vexing issues were resolved. This
prompted the management to give a directive for immediate resumption of all
operations.
Among the vexing
issues are internalisation and expatriation, Nigerian deputy managing
directors, condition of services for Nigerians abroad, geoscience and reservoir
studies in France, organisation
structure, racial discrimination and the company’s new organisation.
PENGASSAN said the
company’s management delineated its operations, particularly the upstream
operations, to create position for more than 72 additional expatriates, who
would resume duties before the end of this month.
The union faulted
the management over the new organisational structure, stating that it was an
agenda for more expatriate influx that would complicate the already deplorable
state of things in the company.
PENGASSAN requested
that one of the three assets should be managed by a Nigerian, especially the
Joint Venture Assets, in which the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation
(NNPC) owned 60 per cent share.
However, the
company, which currently produces about 235,000 barrels per day of liquid
petroleum and about 187 million standard cubit feet of gas per day, had earlier
claimed that it stopped production on its oil and gas fields on Friday July 2
due to degraded safety situation caused by industrial relations problems that
increased the risk of normal production.
