MANY workers may have lost their jobs in the oil and gas industry as a result of the outsourcing of their projects, the President, Association of Outsourcing Professionals of Nigeria (AOPN), Dr Austin Nweze, has said.
In a reaction to a report that over 350,000 workers have lost their jobs in the industry, he said the industry rely on people in the allied sectors, arguing that many of its workers were picked from other fields.
He said the workers were sourced from within and outside the country to ensure that the sector got the best hands.
Speaking on phone with The Nation, Nweze said though the industry represents a large section of the economy, all the sectors are in it.
Nweze said: “That is the reason you see engineers, statisticians, accountants, geologists, marine engineers, architects, surveyors and other professionals contribute their quota to the sector. Often times, these professionals are sourced because of their specialised skills and deep knowledge of their fields. Many of them are employed directly or indirectly by the operating firms in the oil industry. Based on this, it is easier to conclude that the sector has lost many of its outsourced workers.”
He said more people would lose their jobs, if the problems, such as decline in the oil prices, low patronage and others persist in the global oil market. He observed that operators in the upstream and downstream segments of the industry were losing their jobs daily, adding that the sector would continue to either downsize or right- size in tandem with the economic realities.
“There is a lull in the industry. Aside the attendant loss of business in the upstream sector that greeted the sale of assets by Chevron, ConocoPhillips and other oil majors, the downstream sector is battling problems.There is virtually no new exploration in the industry. This is affecting the capacity of the sector to perform optimally,” he said.
He said multinational and local oil firms have lost much and are not ready to incur more losses, according to a research by the association.
He said the firms were not disposed to keeping certain workers to mitigate losses.
“From the research, oil and gas firms are ready to keep few, but not highly remunerated workers, such as security and maintenance officers, who supervise and watch over their equipment. To oil and gas firms, their services are much needed in view of the unstable socio-economic environment in Nigeria. It is expensive to maintain expatriate workers. Their salaries are in foreign currencies, and it would affect the operational costs of the companies if such workers are kept for long. Now, the industry’s problems have rendered them redundant.
“Maintenance of security officials is important to the oil and gas servicing firms.The firms spend a lot of money in providing pipelines, building tanks, deploying exploration equipment into oil wells, and they would not be happy losing those things in a swoop. Though the Joint Task Force set up by the Federal Government to patrol and safeguard oil wells are trying their best, oil firms believe in providing their security to compliment whatever the government has done,” he added.
