About 70 per cent of oil and gas production from traditional onshore and shallow water terrain has been shut in due to the attacks on oil infrastructure in the region, even as the federal government resumed cash payments to militants in the Niger Delta it was learnt on Tuesday, August 2.
This was just as the Managing Director/CEO of Seplat Petroleum Development Company Plc, Mr. Austin Avuru, warned that the crisis in the Niger Delta has interrupted major reforms in Nigeria’s oil and gas industry, which were initiated a few years ago to increase oil and gas production for the attainment of 15,000MW of electricity and also boost economic development nationwide, Thisday reports.
The President Muhammadu Buhari-led administration stopped the payments last February, resulting in militants accusing it of breaching the amnesty deal negotiated in 2009 with the federal government.
The BBC yesterday quoted the spokesman of the Amnesty Programme, Piriye Kiyaramo as saying that the payments, which include tuition for those studying abroad, had been made on Monday, but militants contacted by the BBC said they were yet to receive the money.
Kiyaramo later said a “hiccup” meant that the money was to be paid yesterday evening. “We expect the amnesty allowance to be paid tonight to 30,000 youths involved in the amnesty programme. The Central Bank has released the money,” he said.
Under the amnesty deal, each militant is entitled to N65,000 a month and job training.
Buhari had announced plans in this year’s budget to reduce funding for the programme by 70 per cent amid allegations of widespread corruption.
At the same time, a new militant group, the Niger Delta Avengers (NDA), stepped up attacks on oil industry assets, causing a sharp fall in oil production and worsening the country’s financial crisis.
Speaking yesterday in Lagos at the opening session of the 2016 Nigeria Annual International Conference and Exhibition (NAICE) of the Society of Petroleum Engineers (SPE), Avuru said that the crisis in the oil-producing region has locked in 70 per cent of oil and gas production from the traditional onshore and shallow water terrain.
