The Senate Tuesday mandated its Committees on Petroleum Resources Upstream, Downstream Petroleum Sector to liaise with the Ministry of Petroleum Resources and the Presidential Implementation Committee on the Petroleum Industry Act (PIA), to facilitate the relocation of the oil and gas companies in Nigeria to their various operational bases to ensure their smooth operations.
The resolution followed the adoption of a motion moved by Senator Albert Bassey and 23 others on the urgent need to encourage all multinational and Nigerian oil and gas companies to relocate to their operational bases.
Akpan noted that multinational and Nigerian oil and gas companies have over the years been operating from their respective operational bases until militancy and insecurity in the host communities in the Niger Delta became the order of the day.
He said that operating outside the host communities and operational base is the reason for the high cost of production which has been the bane of the country’s oil and gas industry, militating against maximum revenue from crude oil and gas sales to the federation account.
Akpan recalled that the high cost of production has been one of the most contentious elements of the petroleum industry value chain.
He said that it is an opportunity to restore, recover, and rehabilitate the massive and huge infrastructural facilities abandoned by the various oil and gas companies in their various operational bases to ensure their full utilization.
He also stressed that the relocation of these companies to their host communities will further boost development in those areas and enhance the corporate social relationship as well as reduce the contentious cost of production and ensure adequate returns to the federation account.
