PENGASSAN kicks against sale of SPDC assets to Renaissance Group

The Petroleum and Natural Gas Senior Staff Association of Nigeria (PENGASSAN) has faulted the planned sale of Shell Petroleum Development Company Limited (SPDC) Onshore Assets to the Renaissance Group, alleging that the group is an assembly of unknown entities with no proven track record in managing such diverse assets.

General Secretary, PENGASSAN, Lumumba Okugbawa, in a statement, yesterday, threatened that any attempt to transfer the asset without resolving issues affecting its members would be met with the kind of resistance the oil and gas industry had ever witnessed.

Stating that the industry regulator, JV asset partners (NNPCL) and other stakeholders have been put on notice, he said the Renaissance is a group consisting of ND Western Limited, Aradel Holdings Plc, The Petrolin Group, FIRST Exploration and Petroleum Development Company Limited and the Waltersmith Group.

He said after reviewing the union’s Shell/SNBO Branch presentation rejected, without equivocation, all the terms affecting employees that were communicated in the presentation to its members.

Okugbawa alleged that one of the companies that make up the consortium has a history of subjugating workers and subjecting them to untold hardship as exemplified in the management of OML 34.

He also alleged that another company in the group has a penchant for preventing workers from unionising, thus stifling their condition of services.

The PENGASSAN chief said the group must come clean with its intention(s) and be ready to have a serious engagement with the association and not the alleged jamboree that Shell management is currently engaged in.

He said the association has communicated to its Shell/SNBO branches not to be distracted but to focus on the Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA) negotiation that is due next week.