The Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), has cleared the air on possible downsizing of staff strength, saying it intends to “rightsize”, which requires it to move staff to other sections in the petroleum value chain.
The National Union of Petroleum and National Gas Workers (NUGENG) had prior to now raised concern of possible downsizing of oil workers as a result of the passage of the remaining part of the PIGB Bill.
Clarifying the corporation’s position, Bala Wunti, GMD Corporate Planning and strategy at a symposium on the PIGB on Tuesday in Abuja said, “The NNPC is an integrated oil company.The process of expansion along the entire value chain,require manpower,require more workforce.We would embark on rightsizing and by rightsizing,there would be need to move some people from one section to the other along the value chain”
Bala said, “As you may also know, the NNPC has not been able to reach the last miles in its operations in its value chain economics.What we see going forward is that if we have to survive going forward like Saudi Aramco,there would be more participation in the entire oil and Gas value chain,and staff strength is required,”
He also pointed out that the corporation is synchronising it’s policies and programmes with the National Development Plan,and we are working in accordance with the laid out plan of the seven critical big wins to ensure we arrive at our target of more revenue generation.
Speaking on the remaining part of the PIGB, Waziri Adio, the Executive Secretary of Nigeria Extractive Transparency Initiative, NEITI said the organisation will keep pushing with other key stakeholders to ensure the passage of the remaining part of the bill.
“The PIGB was set up because we realised that most of the laws we had had been overtaken by time. The journey started in 2008,and we have incurred enormous cost since the last 8 years we have tried to pass the bill to the tune about $200bn.”
Waziri said,”One out of the four bill has been passed,and we think that this is a very important time to celebrate this milestone, and it is great to start thinking of the next steps.The next phase is ton ensure we have laws in place that ensures the resources benefits all Nigerians.”
Adio remarked that the symposium is looking at the immediate plans for the fiscal,host community and the administrative part of the bills, and how to use that the proposed laws to ensure contract disclosure,and beneficial ownership and other frontiers of openness.
Recall, the PIGB was first introduced in the Senate in April 2016,withdrawn for further consultations in June 2016, and eventually passed by the Senate on 25th May 2017. The House of Representatives followed suit on 19th January this year when it passed it’s own version of the PIGB.
