The Petroleum and Natural Gas Senior Staff Association of Nigeria (PENGASSAN), has called on the Federal Government to pay up its counterpart fund (cash call) in the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) Joint Venture (JV) operations with the oil companies, claiming non-payment is negatively affecting the operations of the JVs.

Lamenting government’s inability to fund JV operations and unpaid arrears of cash calls, Public Relations Officer of PENGASSAN, Emmanuel Ojugbana, said that despite the fact that NNPC has a larger chunk of the proceeds from the JVs, it has always defaulted in the payment of its own counterpart funding of projects. Exploration activity has been greatly recessed by the challenge of funding the operating budget and cash call obligations. He also said that over 50 per cent cut in JV funding and irregular release of cash calls has made the operators to scale down on the whole spectrum of the E&P operations.

He added that due to these irregular payments, the jobs of the union’s members and other workers in the industry were in jeopardy as companies easily rationalize the disengagement of staff and reduction in welfare packages as being due to lack of funds based on outstanding funding arrears.

He urged the Government to make funds available to clear cash call arrears owed to oil companies so as to restart stalled projects as well as bring in new investments into the sector, which will translate to the creation of more jobs in the industry.