The Petroleum and Natural Gas Senior Staff Association of Nigeria (PENGASSAN), has faulted the sack of the Group Managing Director of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), Austen Oniwon along with his management team, saying that this move will delay the growth of the oil and gas industry.

In a press statement signed by PENGASSAN’s President, Babatunde Ogun, the union said that incessant changes in the management leadership of the NNPC would affect the on-going reforms policy in the industry.

According to the statement, one of the policy thrusts in the on-going NNPC transformation that is likely to suffer setback is the ongoing Turn Around Maintenance (TAM) and repair of the four refineries intended to put them back on stream to operate at their installed capacity.

Mr Ogun said that in the past few months, “the NNPC management had been working assiduously on how to bring back the refineries and there has been results to this effect, as the Kaduna and Port Harcourt Refineries have started working progressively towards their installed capacities, while there are plans to put back the Warri Refinery.”

The union leader expressed fear that the new management might abandon the ongoing TAM and repairs of the refineries, thereby making it possible for the government to sell those refineries as scraps.

The statement also said that “other vital areas where the outgoing team would have been of tremendous value is in the actualisation of well-articulated visions of a globally competitive national oil company in which their wealth of experience is to be tapped in kick-starting the impending Petroleum Industry law to successfully take off.”

While congratulating the new management team led by the new Group Managing Director, Andrew Yakubu, the PENGASSAN president urged the team to follow the laid down reform policies and plans of the outgoing team; adding that the new team would be held accountable for any policy that truncates the growth of the oil and gas industry.

Ogun said that incessant change of management leadership of the NNPC would affect the investment drive in the oil and gas sector, saying that “no investor will want to put money in a sector that the government can wake up in one day and just decide to change the drivers of the reforms and policies that can grow such sector.”

He said that one of the requests of the union in various engagements it had with the government was that “the appointment and disengagement of the Group Managing Director (GMD) should be standardised and tailored over tenureship like other government agencies and parastatals.

“Without prejudice, we are against the process of appointment and removal of NNPC Group Managing Director because it has always drawn the industry backward. It does not engender continuity of development policies, as each of the appointed GMDs comes with his governance style and discontinue previous administrations growth policies.

“In our various engagements with the government, we demanded that the appointment of the GMD should be based on tenure just as we have it in the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) and Bureau for Public Enterprises (BPE), among others should be put in the PIB.”

The union leader said that in the last 10 years, the national oil corporation had had six GMDs from Jackson Gaius-Obaseki to Austen Oniwon, while the CBN and the NCC had had two each within the same period, adding that “this brings serious challenges of uncertainty and instability with such major appointments, in a volatile and strategic industry like the oil and gas.