The country chair, Shell Companies in Nigeria, Mr. Osagie
Okunbor, has declared the company’s commitment to development of the country,
even as the firm under its joint venture contributed the sum of $29 billion in
the last four years to boost investment in Nigeria, reports ITRealms.
Disclosing this in Lagos, Okunbor said that the Shell Petroleum
Development Company of Nigeria Ltd (SPDC) operated Joint Venture alone contributed
the sum of $29 billion to the Nigerian purse between 2012 and 2016.
He also said that in 2016 alone, the royalties and corporate
taxes paid by Shell Companies in Nigeria to the Federal Government amounted to
$1.4 billion (SPDC $1.0 billion and Shell Nigeria Exploration and Production
Company (SNEPCo) $0.4 billion).
“This is besides the energy which Shell Companies contribute to
the Nigerian economy, with Shell-operated ventures in Nigeria recording an
output of some 572,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day in 2016,” he said.
Okunbor, who doubles as the Managing Director of SPDC, gave the
statistics in a review of Shell operations in Nigeria for 2016 while sharing the 2017 Shell Nigeria Briefing Notes with ITRealms.
“Shell has been operating in Nigeria for more than 50 years. “And
it is not by chance that we have remained deeply committed to the development
of Nigeria, her people and her economy by efficiently and responsibly producing
oil and gas in onshore and offshore as well as distributing gas to industries
and producing liquefied natural gas for export,” he said.
The determination of Shell to support the monetisation of the
nation’s huge gas resources, Okubor revealed, led it to establishment of Shell
Nigeria Gas in 1998, which now supplies gas to about 90 industrial customers in
Ogun, Rivers and Abia states. The gas is used for power generation and
processing by industries for the manufacture of domestic products ranging from
household consumables, to household utensils and hardware.
Further, he said, Shell Companies in Nigeria
paid special attention to the welfare of host communities, making Nigeria the
second largest recipient of social investment spending in the Shell Group after
the United States. Areas of focus include community and enterprise development,
education, health, access-to-energy and since 2016, road safety.
This, he said was in
addition to community-driven development programmes and initiatives delivered
through the Global Memorandum of Understanding (GMoU), which target themes as
determined by benefiting communities.
In a bid to involve more Nigerian contractors in their
operations, the Shell Contractor Funding initiative was expanded with eight
participating banks committing about $2.2 billion to fund contract execution by
Nigerian companies working for Shell Companies in Nigeria. Since the
programme’s creation in 2011, loans worth approximately $1 billion have been
awarded to 220 small and medium-sized Nigerian enterprises with no recorded
defaults on repayment. The Shell Contractor Fund was approved by the Organisation
for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) at its plenary session on
“Shared Value creation and local content” in December 2016 and included in the
compendium of global best practices.
SNEPCo added to its efforts to improve the capability of
Nigerian vendors and service providers in deep water operations by assigning
significant portion of work to this category of contractors in its
recently-concluded turnaround maintenance at Bonga field.
Mr. Okunbor also commented on crude theft and other security
issues in Shell operations. Crude oil theft on SPDC’s pipeline network resulted
in a loss of about 5,660 barrels of oil a day (bbl/d) in 2016, which is less
than the 25,000 bbl/d in 2015. The number of sabotage-related spills declined
to 45 compared with 93 in 2015. He explained: “The reduction in oil theft and
sabotage-related spills from the previous year can be attributed to continued
improvements in air and ground surveillance and response by government security
forces, lower production levels at SPDC JV operations in the Western part of
the Niger Delta due to acts of sabotage and our divestment from key pipelines
in 2015.”
“We continue to work with the government and other key
stakeholders on the security challenges in our operating environment and look
towards sustained and fruitful operations for the benefit of the Nigerian state
and all other shareholders,” he said.
Chuks Egbune/GEE
Pix: L-R: Campaign Implementation Advisor, Shell Petroleum Development Company of Nigeria (SPDC), Mrs. Darbuni Maikori; Communications Manager, Shell Nigeria, Mrs. Sola Abulu and Corporate Media Relations Manager, Mr. Precious Okolobo.
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