According to the union in a statement, Sunday, the move was an attempt to provoke workers in the oil and gas sector and cause industrial unrest in the country
The statement signed by the acting General Secretary, NUPENG, Joseph Ogbebor, stressed that the unbundling and rebranding of the NNPC as announced by the minister was another public policy change, which was not consistent with the laws establishing the corporation.
NUPENG stated that the restructuring in the oil and gas industry, especially at the NNPC, to achieve optimal performance could not be achieved without due consultation with the unions and other stakeholders in the sector.
The union stated that the unilateral action of the Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, Dr. Ibe Kachikwu, was not in consonance with the laws establishing the NNPC.
He warned that the plan would be resisted by oil and gas workers in the country.
“The union adds that the legality, appropriateness and timelessness of this whole exercise is condemnable. It states that it will not tolerate a situation whereby the unbundled companies will now hide under the cover to start disengaging its workers.
“The union recalled that job creation and job security have been the change mantra of the current administration.
“The union reiterates that the move is to kill the NNPC by all means, but that they should know that the corporation is a creation of law and that it will take the repealing of the original Act to effect the changes that they are planning to carry out,” the labour union.
It would be recalled that Kachikwu, last Thursday, had disclosed that the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) would be split into five major operational zones with about 30 independent companies each with its own chief executive officer with a given targets to achieve.
Kachikwu who also doubles as the Group Managing Director (GMD) of the corporation also stated that the federal government will from this week, announce the final outcome of this planned major overhaul of the entire structures of the state oil company.
Kachikwu, who said these in Abuja while speaking at the 25th Annual Oloibiri Lecture Series and Energy Forum (OLEF) of the Society of Petroleum Engineers, Nigerian Council, added that the structural overhaul would see the new companies competing for business opportunities across the global oil and gas industry with sustainable profits expected from them.
According to him, the NNPC would be broken into the upstream, downstream, midstream, and refining while every other company that is trending would be merged into the venture group.
“Within the next one week, we are going to be announcing some really major overhaul of the system, one that hasn’t been done in over 20 years. The effect of that would be to quite frankly unbundle the huge company into four to five main operational zones: the upstream, downstream, midstream, refining, and of course every other company that is trending to the venture group.
“But what is more important is that at the same time we are also unbundling the subsets of these companies to about 30 independent companies with their own managing directors and so titles like the group executive directors which you have been used to in the last 30 years will disappear and in place of that, you are going to have chief executive officers.”
According to Kachikwu, chief executive officers who would be appointed to head the new companies would have to take responsibilities for the titles they would be assigned because “at the end of the day, a CEO of an upstream company must deliver upstream results and we are very focused on that.”
