Leaders of the oil producing communities in Delta state have clamoured for the reversal of the Oil Mining License (OML),30, 36, 42, which they claimed were wrongly allocated by the federal government to (Nigerian Petroleum Development Company) NPDC, which took over from Shell Petroleum Nigeria when it left the city of Warri.
According to the elders, NDPC is not effective in managing the oil fields in Delta state, with its head office located in Benin. The elders lament the company has little or no knowledge about what is happening in various host communities of the oil wells.
In a meeting held at the Protea Hotel, Warri, community leaders from Itsekiri, Ijaw, Isoko, Ndokwa and Urhobo tribes alleged that the NPDC and other companies that took up the OML is “highly illegal and should be corrected as this can be regarded as short changing the oil producing communities in Delta state.”
During the meeting, some of the leaders also declared that “since the handing over of these OMLs to NPDC, nothing is happening in Warri and other oil producing communities in the state unlike when Shell Petroleum was on ground.”
They claimed that “things were different and the communities benefited in several ways” when the Dutch company was operating in their community.
In an interview session, the leader from Itsekiri community; Chief Ayiri Imami and other members of the group appealed to the federal government to correct this injustice, stating that not only is it affecting the communities, some contractors presently on OML 42 have not been paid for past 14months and nothing has been done about it.
They further allege that there is only one person representing these oil producing communities in Atlantic Energy and so nothing much has been done since the handing over of the OML to NPDC.
In 2011 Shell sold its 30% stake in Nigerian onshore oil block OML 42 to local consortium Neconde Energy – which includes Nestoil Group, Aries E&P Company Limited, VP Global and Poland’s Kulczyk Oil Ventures – for $390 million.