By Clara Nwachukwu

The local unit of US oil major, Chevron Nigeria Limited, CNL, has said that its relationship and intervention with communities in its areas of operations are based on a tripod.

These are social investment, social impact & risk assessment, and stakeholder engagement & issues management.
Elaborating further on the successes of these levels of engagement, CNL’s Manager, Social Performance and Planning, Mr Esimaje Brikinn, argued that development programmes initiated herewith have recorded significant impact among the people and the benefiting communities.

Brikinn, who made a presentation Chevron’s Social Performance at the recent conference and exhibition of the Society for Petroleum Engineers, SPE, also identified various projects being executed under the sub-themes.
For instance, the thematic focus for intervention in the area of social investment, include:

· Health – HIV/AIDS, river boat clinic, malaria, and mass de-worming
· Education – scholarships, education infrastructure, discovery alliance
· Eco development – GmoU, enterprise development, local community content, and,
· Other programmes in the areas of arts & sports, road safety, and environment.

Expatiating further, he revealed that partnerships in HIV/AIDS interventions in Nigeria, are executed through a number of ways such as a Global Fund; Pact-Prevention of Mother to Child Transmission of HIV/AIDS, PROMOT; and Business Leadership Council, BLC.

In the area of the Global Memorandum of Understanding, GMoU, Brikinn listed some of the guiding principles to include:

Ø Trust building through Transparency and accountability
Ø Participatory partnership through stakeholder engagement
Ø Community ownership and sustainability assurance through capacity building
Ø Peace Building through grievance management and respect for the rule of law, and,
Ø Continuous monitoring and evaluation for improvement opportunities

He listed the outcome of some of the GMoU interventions to include; the Dodo River 45 beds Cottage Hospital; Jisike Tricycle Revolving Loan Transportation Scheme; Ezetu 1 Landing Jetty; Idama Car Transportation Scheme.

In another development, the trio of Hammed Shittu, Kemelayefa Ejeru, and Emeka Ejika, in their presentation showed how material balance was used in a green field development plan.

The presentation was also meant to demonstrate the use of probabilistic material balance workflow and to benchmark results with other methods.

The trio, who made a presentation on: Probabilistic Material Balance: Application in Green Field Development Planning, therefore concluded that the probabilistic material balance method, is a reliable method for estimating a range of recovery factors.

They also argued that the addition of probabilistic step to the use of material balance analysis eliminates bias and prevents anchoring.