Total’s Divestment From Rivers: Matters Arising

The vigilance of a federal lawmaker representing Degema, Bonny Federal Constituency, Honourable Farah Dagogo has put the multinational oil company, Total Group on the block over its planned divestment from the Rivers State. The company’s agenda commenced with the shifting of its oil servicing companies from the Egina offshore field in Onne, Rivers State to LADOL Yard in Lagos State. The significance of the planned shift of services from Rivers State to Lagos remains a tacit gesture of divestment by Total Group and is underscored by the fact that Egina field produces at peak performance, about 200,000 barrels of oil daily, making it a major facility.
LADOL is an acronym for Lagos Deep Offshore Logistics Base, located at the entry point to Lagos harbour and accessed by 200-metre quay which is to be expanded to 1000 metres. It is a logistics and supply chain centre which was established in the year 2000 as part of the Lagos Special Economic Zone and serves as one stop service shop for multinational industrial and oil and gas operations. The irony here is that LADOL was established in Lagos with no drop of crude oil while the Niger Delta region which is the source of the resource has been left bereft of such facility.
Alerting the nation over this development, Honourable Dagogo highlighted its dangerous implications for escalating the level of unemployment with loss of jobs for the employable youth of the Niger Delta region. The loss of jobs will invariably lead to escalation of unrest and its unpalatable consequences. To accentuate his case, Honourable Farah Dagogo plans to present a motion on the matter during plenary of the House of Representatives after the institution’s resumption from its ongoing recess. The motion is intended to compel the multinational oil companies in the region to be more domesticated in their operational bases including moving their operational headquarters to the area. By his intervention, Honourable Dagogo is lending his voice to a growing lobby of advocacy aimed at compelling the corporate oil companies to relocate their headquarters to the Niger Delta region. In the same vein calls on relevant stake holders to join the advocacy for the firms to do the needful.
The divestment agenda of Total Group therefore comes against the backdrop of the aforementioned stringent calls on multinational oil companies operating in the country’s Niger Delta region to increase their presence, through establishing their downstream operations such as services delivery activities in the region. By such activities, they were expected to create jobs for locals around their operational bases and thereby vitiate the incentive for restiveness among such people.
It is easily recalled that among the factors that have bedevilled oil and gas exploration and production in the region is the perception of the oil companies as mere agents of mindless exploitation of the resources of the region without commensurate concern and commitment to the often deleterious consequences of the activities. Given the highly automated processes in the oil and gas sector, operators virtually garner the resources with minimal direct physical presence at the operational sites. This situation has isolated the critical decision makers in the industry from direct contact with the harshest state of affairs in the actual operational zones leaving much of the victims of hazards from hazardous activities unattended to.
Just as well, the absence of the strategic leaders of the oil firms is often exploited to violate extant laws and regulations governing operational expedients aimed at facilitating environmental soundness. The advocacy for encouraging the designated oil is to enhance their direct contact with consequences of their operations on a real time basis, as well as facilitate closer interface with their host communities. And as experience has shown in several instances, it is actually in the best interest of the firms to be as close as possible to their operational bases and host communities.
It is significant that while a company like Total Group is sneaking its service operations out of Rivers State to Lagos, another younger oil company, Belema Oil Producing Limited is demonstrating a higher sense of responsibility and sensitivity to the aspirations of its host communities by identifying with the core concerns of the latter. For instance, Belemaoil has apart from investing commendably in its host communities, recently splashed scores of scholarship awards to deserving beneficiaries from its host communities.
It is with this context that the alert by Honourable Dagogo remains commendable and qualifies to be seen in its fuller panoply as a wake-up call for the establishment of world class maritime as well as oil and gas facilities of the class of LADOL, within the Niger Delta region, for the purpose of trapping the jobs that are ferried out to Lagos and possibly abroad. It is also in such a respect that the various statutory interventionist agencies lie the Ministry of Niger Delta Affairs, the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC) should go beyond the traditional handout class programmes and projects and aspire to develop long term turnkey facilities that will redefine life and business in the area. By partnering with well-disposed public and private sector interests both at home and abroad, the NDDC can stimulate the development of key economic facilities that will predispose the Rivers State in particular and the rest of the Niger Delta region a bigger role in the maritime based blue economy, which is their natural due.
This is why the divestment moves by Total Group and any other multinational from the Rivers State remains a business challenge that needs to be addressed. Honourable Farah Dagogo’s take is therefore on course.