BY YEMIE ADEOYE

IN an effort to reaffirm its commitment to community development in its areas of operation the Shell Petroleum Development Company has announced that it invested about 402 million dollars on community development projects in the 7 states where it operates in Nigeria between 2006 and 2010.

This was the position of the company’s Government and Community relations Manager, Mr. Funkakpo Funfeyin when he played host to a select group of Nigerian and international media at his office in Portharcourt, Rivers state.

He was speaking against the backdrop of information making the rounds that the oil giant is not community friendly especially in his areas of operations in the country.

According to him the company has even gone a step further to introduce the Global Memorandum of Understanding (GMoU) model which serves as a platform for projects and programs delivery, as well as interface and grievance management.

Funfeyin also listed as part of his company’s achievements with the GMoU model about 250 projects completed by the 2009 which gulped a whooping 6 billion naira or 45 million dollars.

“Five of the clusters formed have also now evolved into registered foundations capable of attracting other sources of funds.  We have also attained a better organized community interface as well as grievance/ dispute resolution mechanism.

SPDC also won 2 Nigeria corporate social responsibility awards one based on community health insurance scheme pioneered by IA cluster in the Niger-Delta.”

He further stated that over 14,500 employment opportunities has been created for community members between 2006-2010  through land, marine transport, and fishery projects, micro credit schemes and live wire Nigeria program

In the area of economic empowerment through agriculture Shell said it has in partnership with USAID expended about 20 million dollars for five years with focus on Agric/ Aquaculture with small and medium enterprises, IITA is implementing the agric component.

“This partnership supports distribution of high-yield cassava mosaic disease resistant varieties, expansion of production, establishment of small and medium scale processing mills and marketing of finished products. Hence by end of 2009, over 20,000 farmers trained with 8,369 employment opportunities created.  Even as we also completed 64 small scale processing facilities in Akwa-Ibom, Abia, Ebonyi, Bayelsa, Delta, Rivers, Edo, Enugu and Cross River states.”

In the power sector Fufeyin stated that the SPDC embarked upon the popular Afam power plant project at a cost of over 1 billion dollars as part of efforts to support the development of the Niger-Delta economy.

“Afam VI power station consisting of 3×150 Mw gas turbines and 1x 200 Mw steam turbine and with an installed capacity of 650 Mw will provide about 10 percent of the national aspiration of 6000Mw.

In all the multination oil giant re-emphasized its insistence that government is key to the development of Nigeria as the oil industry efforts alone can not bring about the expected development in the Niger-Delta.

Mr. Fufeyin further stated that SPDC is working with other IOC’s to ensure that  amnesty succeeds, just as it also vigorously pursue power inter-dependency to enable social programs in the communities.SPDC spends US$ 402M on community development in 4 years