Leading Nigerian energy company, Seplat Energy Plc, says it has resumed full operations at its Amukpe and Sapele West facilities after protesting contractors forced a brief halt to business activities, including a declaration of force majeure to affected customers.
The company, quoted on the Nigerian and London Stock Exchanges, made the development known in a statement in Lagos.
It noted that some community indigenes working as contractors’ personnel invaded the facilities, thereby disrupting production but through stakeholder engagements and collaboration with the government, the disruption was resolved and normal operations have resumed.
The firm had sent appeal to its contractor personnel 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 percent 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 assured that it will continuously strive to ensure best practice in the management of personnel provided to it 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, the firm appealed.
It said, “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. ”
