Another round of fuel scarcity looms as PENGASSAN threatens strike

The Petroleum and Natural Gas Senior Staff Association of Nigeria (PENGASSAN) on Wednesday threatened a confrontation with the federal government if the the government fails to tackle widespread oil theft in the Niger Delta.

In an interview, the President of PENGASSAN, Festus Osifo, blamed troops and other security personnel guarding the nation’s oil pipelines for the ongoing oil theft.

If the government did not stop the theft, the association, he warned, would suspend oil production.

Additionally, he said that the association would organize simultaneous rallies today, Thursday, in Abuja, Warri, Kaduna, and Lagos.

He claimed that despite security agencies protecting pipelines, the rallies would show the government that PENGASSAN members were fed up with generating oil that would eventually be taken by criminals.

He added that because the theft jeopardized the jobs of its employees, major international oil corporations including Agip, Total, Shell, and Addax have stopped oil production in several wells.

He said, “If after this rally there is no traceable progress, as an association, we may be forced to withdraw our workforce from the operating companies, because we cannot continuously send crude oil into the pipelines and at the end of the day the pipelines are vandalised by people who don’t know how the oil was produced.

READ ALSO: PENGASSAN explains cause of fuel scarcity in Lagos, Abuja

“Some of these pipeline vandals, when you stop production in a line, they call our members and threaten them, asking our members why they stopped production and that they should open the line.

“So, the lives of our members are even at risk. For someone to have your phone number and call you that means the person knows you. Therefore, we can no longer condone this, the government must sit up.”

Osifo said the vandals had been deploying sophisticated technology, as it was not just members of host communities that were perpetuating the crime.

He added, “So, today it has become necessary for us as an association to cry out and shout because if necessary steps are not taken we will be forced to embark on a nationwide solidarity by withdrawing our members from production.

The Group Chief Executive Officer of the Nigeria National Petroleum Company Limited, Mele Kyari, had last Tuesday said the spate of vandalism had prompted the NNPC to shut down its entire network of pipelines conveying petroleum products nationwide.

“When we say we are losing several 700,000 barrels of crude oil daily, we mean it. This is opportunity loss. There is no company that will produce oil and then you lose 80 percent of that and continue to produce the oil.