UMBRELLA body for senior staff in the nation’s oil industry, the Petroleum and Natural Gas Senior Staff Association of Nigeria (PENGASSAN), is becoming uncomfortable with the issues being thrown up by the ongoing reforms in the sector and it is not pretending about.

In a union/management meeting we held with SHELL management in Port Harcourt on November 12, 2008, the head of employees’ relations made us to understand that they operate across 11 states that make up the oil producing states, in 4002 communities and with contracts that are more than 22,000 with both labour and service contractors.

Kidnapping in Imo State took a dangerous dimension Monday with the reported abduction of the President, Customary Court of Appeal, Hon. Justice Ambrose B.C. Egu, by a gang said to be wearing army uniforms.

EVEN as the Federal Government and organised labour last week set up a committee to work out the modalities for the implementation of the planned full deregulation of the downstream sector of the Petroleum industry, a professor of Policy Analysis and Development Studies, Sam Amdii, has declared that government can hardly deregulate a market it has little muscle to control or check.

Insurance companies in the country have been offered a leeway for them to break into new markets in Cameroon as the African Insurance Organisation (AIO) leads over 40 countries to Douala this month.

Dr. Teslim Sanusi, the President of the Nigerian Council of Registered Insurance Brokers (NCRIB) in this interview with Patience Saghana of Sweet crude explains the implications of the proposed N100million capital base for brokers, the damage repair being embarked upon by the body and the neglect of local brokers by NNPC and many more.

Custodian and Allied Insurance Plc is leading 39 other insurance companies on the 2010/2011 Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation- Consolidated Insurance Policy (NNPC-CIP) just as co-insurers on the accounts are commending the lead insurer over the way and manner it has coordinated the accounts.

Seven persons among them two soldiers were reportedly killed today (Tuesday) at Okolobiri in the outskirts of Yenagoa the Bayelsa State following a violent clash between men of the Joint Taskforce (JTF) and suspected Egbesu cultists.

THE 2010 Nigeria oil and gas conference/exhibition which ended last week in Abuja threw up some key issues that would dominate debate on both the political and the oil and gas arena for some time to come.

ABUJA – The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) has provided graphic details of how the activities of pipeline vandals have complicated the free flow of petroleum products and crude supply in its pipeline system leading to a colossal cost of over N174.57 billion in product losses and repairs of products pipelines within the last 10 years.

MR. Ernest Nwapa is the General Manager in charge of the Nigerian Content Division at the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC).

AMID the controversy triggered by the impeachment of Speaker of Edo State House of Assembly, Hon. Zakawanu Garuba and his deputy, Hon. Levi Aigbogun, the Senate President, Senator David Mark and Speaker of the House of Representatives, Hon. Dimeji Bankole, among others, have been asked to investigate the 16- member signatories that carried out the action.

The Federal Government has said that arrangements were in the pipeline to criminalise torture and extra-judicial executions in the country.

INVESTIGATIONS into the circumstances that led to the alleged killings of two Ilaje youths during last Monday protest at Costain community, Escravos, has commenced by the Joint Task Force, JTF.

The House of Representatives Committee on Petroleum (downstream) was livid as Dr. Rilwan Lukman, Minister of Petroleum; Odein Ajumogobia, Minister of State for Petroleum and Mohammed Barkindo, Group Managing Director (GMD) of Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) Tuesday shunned its invitation to an investigative hearing over alleged contract scam worth $75 million at the Kaduna Refinery.