A Major labour crisis is looming in Port Harcourt following the stoppage of gas supply by the Shell Petroleum Development Company of Nigeria to 12 manufacturing companies in the state over a controversial N700m debt.
The companies, which are located on the Trans-Amadi Industrial Estate in the heart of Port Harcourt, depend on gas from the SPDC for their daily production and employ no fewer than 20, 000 Nigerians, most of them from Rivers State.
Shell, it was learnt, stopped gas supply to the only surviving production company on April 1, 2007 and had refused to discuss with officials of the companies on the grounds that it did not have any contractual agreement with them.
Under the existing but controversial arrangement, Shell sells bulk gas to the companies but collects a bulk sum from the Rivers State Ministry of Energy and Natural Resources, which prepares the bills and pays to the oil company.
However, following an irreconcilable gas volume supplied to the ministry, SPDC last Sunday shut out the affected firms from its gas supply line and insisted that the debts must be paid before it resumed supply.
Angered by the stoppage, which had forced the companies to shut down their production plants and send their workers home, the companies on Thursday sent a letter of appeal to the Rivers State Governor, Dr. Peter Odili, to prevail on the SPDC to resume gas supply to them to prevent the closure of the surviving firms in the state.
They also addressed a news conference at the premises of the First Aluminium Nigeria Plc, Port Harcourt and pleaded with SPDC to resume gas supply to them.
In a three-page Save-Our-Soul letter, which they sent to Odili, read by the General Manager in charge of Management Services in First Aluminium Plc, Mr. Festus Pepple, on behalf of Association of Gas Consumers, the companies said they were at a loss as to how the N700m debt came about.
Pepple lamented that at a meeting with the ministry officials on March 20, 2007, the companies were compelled to pay the so-called debt without any explanation on how the debt was incurred.
Pepple said, �We have objected to the volume difference in gas supplied to us by SPDC because all the companies have flow metres installed in their plants where their consumption is rated, billed and payment made.
�We are therefore at a loss as to how the volume differential arose between the ministry and SPDC. Unfortunately, the companies do not have any direct dealing with SPDC as the ministry is the intermediary in the arrangement whereby SPDC sends a bill to the ministry, which in turn, reads our bills individually and sends bills according to what has been consumed.�