By Dapo Akinrefon
Federal Government has been urged to mandate oil companies to live up to their corporate social responsibilities by ensuring wealth generation in oil-producing communities.

A Warri-based pipeline construction engineer, Mr. Misan Gbebitse, in a statement, Monday, noted that the adoption of an all-inclusive machine, such as the Horizontal Directional Drilling, HDD, was capable of killing the local content policy of the Federal Government as it relates to employment and wealth generation.

He also said that the continued deprivation of oil producing communities of developmental projects by oil companies would alienate the people and make them hostile to such companies.

He said: “I have followed the debate put forward by Pan Ocean on the use of the HDD technology for the AEPP and I see a lot of defects in that decision. In one direction, I am yet to be convinced of the need for HDD technology on the terrain of Amukpe-Escravos Pipeline Project, AEPP.

“The HDD machine is basically to break the barriers of environmental features such as hills, rivers, or such infrastructural features like railway lines. There are no such features on the right of way.”