Seplat Energy has said that some community indigenes working as contractors’ personnel invaded Seplat facilities at Amukpe and Sapele West locations, disrupting production activities and subsequently forcing a brief halt to business activities, including a declaration of force majeure to affected customers.
The company condemned all forms of confrontations by
indigenes working as contractors at Amukpe and Sapele, Delta state.
In a statement obtained by Energy Vanguard, it stated: “On
Friday, 19 May 2023 at 0600 hours, some community indigenes working as
contractors’ personnel invaded Seplat facilities at Amukpe and Sapele West
locations, disrupting production activities and subsequently forcing a brief
halt to business activities, including a declaration of force majeure to
affected customers. Through stakeholder engagements and collaboration with the
Government, the disruption has been resolved and normal operations have resumed.
“At Seplat Energy, our contractor personnel are encouraged
to make their grievances known (if any) through their managing contractors or
designated Seplat officials, or otherwise leverage established third-party
mediation channels.
We are actively looking into why these individuals opted for
a disruptive action without recourse to established procedures and with no
concern or regard for public safety and national interest (our Seplat West
facilities supply about 37 per cent of the gas used for power generation in the
country).
“Our stakeholder engagements continue. We have established
through a meeting with the contractors’ personnel, security agencies and Okpe
Host Communities Forum leaders that the disruption was due to the individuals’
demands for salary increment and automatic conversion to regular staff.
The contractors managing these individuals have been
notified of their actions, and we understand that plans were underway to
implement a salary increment for their personnel before the incident occurred.
“We must emphasize that during the invasion of our
facilities, we ensured the safety and security of our staff which is always our
primary priority. All of our production staff are safe, and no injury or harm
was recorded.
“Seplat Energy continuously strives to ensure best practice
in the management of personnel provided to us by third party service providers,
including regular engagements on their grievances. These service providers will
continue to engage their personnel and amicably address the concerns raised by
them.”
It added: “We would like to appreciate the support from our
community leaders and the government security agencies in working together with
Seplat Energy to efficiently manage the situation, prevent any HSE incident and
promptly restore normal operations.
As part of our continuous improvement initiatives, we are
maintaining an open line of communication with all concerned parties and in the
coming weeks, we will complete a post-mortem and extract critical
lessons-learned to strengthen our operations and prevent any recurrence.”