By Ameachi Prosper
The operations of Sterling Oil Exploration and Energy Production Company Limited, SEEPCO may be shut down over non-implementation of the GMoU it entered with host communities since July 30, 2014.
The Agge Federated Communities of the Kou Kingdom in Bayelsa and Delta States, who issued the threat warned that the resolution reached on December 14, 2020 at Governor’s Office Annex, Warri, between Officials of the company, Delta State Government and the host communities, must be honoured or operations of SEEPCO will be shut-down.
Chairman, Agge Federated Communities, German Irou, who addressed Newsmen at Asaba, Delta State on the sideline of a meeting convened by Delta State Government, with a view to fashioning out a new Global Memorandum of Understanding, GMoU between SEEPCO and Agge Federated Communities, stated: “SEEPCO has been defiant and displayed nonchalant attitude to several agreements reached.
According to him, government has directed SEEPCO to pay the communities the months they are owing and make sure the generator sets are put into use within 21 days and to introduce Yade Barge Operators Limited and DeepFront Line Shippers Limited to Agge Community within one month.
The chairman, equally noted that government asked SEEPCO to upwardly review Anchorage and Palliative monthly payment to the communities and to pay N100 million to Agge community for deliberately refusing to operate without GMOU from 2018 till date, but the company was yet to comply.
He said the host communities also accused SEEPCO of: “Creating multiple shell companies to continually award contracts running into billions of dollars to themselves, generating invoices of bogus amounts to themselves and using same to extort the Federal Government of Nigeria under the Production Sharing Contracts governing their Oil licenses as ‘cost of production’, which they minus from the cost of the crude oil sold, before proceeding to still share the balance of what is left with the Federal Government.”
Meanwhile, the Community Liaison Officer, CLO of SEEPCO, Timothy Konyefa, maintained that they were ready to sign the proposed GMOU, saying COVID -19 had affected the operations of the company, hence the delay.
Delta State Commissioner for Oil and Gas, Chief Emmanuel Amgbaduba, represented by the Director, Local Content Promotion in the Ministry of Oil and Gas, Avwenaghagha A., representatives of Delta State Ministry of Justice and NPDC as well as the Management of SEEPCO and the host communities, were attending the ongoing negotiation for the signing of a new GMoU as at the time of filing this report.
