In a bid to reduce incidents of pipeline vandalism and crude oil theft from the 2013 record of 49 cases to the barest minimum, Shell Petroleum Development Company of Nigeria (SPDC) has initiated a new strategy that fuses its pipelines contract management system as an integral part of the grassroots-based development paradigm driven by the Global Memorandum of Understanding (GMoU).
Consequently, the company has scrapped the legacy pipelines surveillance contracts and created a new model community-based pipelines surveillance structure with host communities directly in charge of securing the strategic national assets under four GMoU portfolios covering Eleme, Tai and Gokana 1 and 2 clusters on one of the most sabotaged Trans Niger Pipelines (TNP).
Unveiling the dual-purpose strategy to newsmen in Port Harcourt last Thursday, General Manager, Onshore Assets, SPDC, Grzegorz Kulawski, said that the tested and proven model was designed to drive development while at the same time promoting environmental sustainability in Ogoniland.
Kulawski said that given the company’s experience in the area and the outstanding performance of the pilot strategy in Tarakiri, Oporomor and Nembe-Bassambiri clusters in Bayelsa, and Ikwerre and Degema 1 clusters in Rivers, it decided to deploy the GMoU framework to support community development efforts in the area as well as enhance the ability and capacity to protect and secure the TNP which passes through several non-producing facilities in Ogoni since 1993.
Explaining the details of the programme, General Manager, Sustainable Development and Community Relations, Nedo Osayande, said that “the new GMoU agreements with Community Development Boards (CDBs) in Eleme, Tai, Gokana I and Gokana II will support more than 500 youths from 30 communities engaged in unarmed surveillance activities along sections of the 24-inch and 28-inch TNP in Ogoniland, replacing expired pipeline surveillance arrangements with existing contractors.
Osayande assured that SPDC will provide the required funding for both the pipelines surveillance and community development initiatives while the pipeline patrol teams will report all incursions directly to government security agencies for immediate action, adding that leaders of communities where the TNP traverses now have the mandate to select people directly from the affected communities to secure the pipelines, and save their environment for posterity.
According to him, “the new agreements make community-appointed personnel responsible for monitoring pipelines and other facilities, and not individual contractors”, stressing that “the agreements in Rivers and Bayelsa States have helped to reduce the rate of crude theft, and we hope to see the same trend in Ogoniland, thus saving the people and the environment from the effects of incessant crude theft activities.”
The general manager said that before the kick-off of the new strategy on May 1, 2014, SPDC had engaged all stakeholders in the affected three local governments, including traditional rulers, youth groups, women leaders, community and environmental rights groups, Rivers State Government and leaders of the three local government councils, as well as the former pipelines surveillance contractors whose contracts had expired, and secured their buy-in even before the GMoU pacts were signed in January, 2014, and the CDBs constituted by the communities.