Reports indicate that an expatriate was uplifted from Lagos International airport by a driver purporting to be from G4S, the same service provider that XXXXXXX uses. He had a large placard with the expatriate's name on it. When the expatriate got in the car, he was taken away and mugged of all his possessions. In another instance, two men dressed in full G4S uniform, once again with a placard with an arriving expatriate's name on, convinced him to get in the vehicle and then mugged him.
The modus operandi is as follows:
Company manifest lists are intercepted so that names of employees can be collected.
Perpetrators dress up in company apparel and write the names of the employees on placards.
Actual company drivers are "kept out the picture" either through threats or pay offs. We are not sure.
Once the employee gets down to the car park and realizes it is not a company vehicle, more perpetrators show up and force them into the vehicle.
Employee(s) are then taken to an unknown location and mugged after which they are dropped off at random locations.
Security alert from Shell. Just for your info.
Tuesday May 29 is the planned date for hand over to the newly elected Nigerian Government. It is considered likely that there will be rallies and protests over this period. We have already seen some turbulence, and media reports about possibilities for further unrest which may well last at least till after the transfer of power. Staff are advised to remain extra vigilant and take their own security seriously in to consideration in planning their various moves. Staff and their managers are to review all travel in this period and make alternative arrangements, in line with the following:
1. Travel restrictions for overseas-based visitors
No business visits or Shell sponsored travel for all Shell companies in Nigeria and NLNG in the period 27th - 31st May (both dates inclusive). This applies to:
o Overseas based Shell staff
o Overseas based third party staff
2. Travel restrictions for Shell staff based in the Delta Region
No expatriate staff will be authorized to travel in/out of Warri, Bonny Island and Port Harcourt in the period 27th - 31st May 2007 (inclusive). This applies to all travel - overseas leave, business visits and courses.
Travel between Port Harcourt and Warri can only be conducted by Helicopter from RA/IA to RA/IA and must be approved at Director level.
All flights which already been booked over the banned period are to be amended, but without penalty to the expatriate's leave days and without extra cost to the expatriate. Expatriate staff has to ensure that all flight bookings are outside these dates. Expatriate staff may fly international to/from Lagos or Abuja. Those continuing to delta locations can only plan continuation from 1st June.
XXXXX or XXXXX must personally authorize any exceptions to the restrictions specified in this section.
3. Restrictions on movement of staff
Expatriate staff based in Lagos, Abuja, Warri and Port Harcourt will work from home on Monday 28th and all staff on Wednesday 30th May. Nigerian staff are expected to leave the office at 16:00 hours on the 28th. Tuesday 29th May is expected to be a public holiday. If it is not, all staff - Nigerian and expats will work from home. All staff are required to contact the phone numbers (below) from 18:00 hours onwards on Wednesday 30th May to ensure they can return to the office on Thursday 31st May.
Strike Aimed at Paralyzing Oil & Gas Industry
There were strong indications yesterday that oil workers under the umbrellas of the National Union of Petroleum and Natural Gas (NUPENG) and Petroleum and Natural Gas Senior Staff Association (PENGASSAN) will today begin a strike action to protest what they perceive as indiscriminate sale of the nation's refineries by the Federal Government . Also, workers at the Nigerian Gas Company (NGC) will cut gas supply to strategic investments, such as gas power plants.
The NUPENG national president, Mr. Peter Akpatason stated that the strike action has indeed commenced and will continue tomorrow as workers are not happy with the manner the government sold off the refineries. The strike has began and it will continue tomorrow, what the government did was wrong. We are protesting the indiscriminate sale of the refineries,he stated.
The group chairman PENGASSAN,NNPC, Mr. John Elibe had last week directed all workers of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) and its affiliates to come to report to work today clad in red outfits as a way of expressing their anger over this move by the government, as well as the sale of the Stallion House to Zenon Oil.
"The strike is aimed at paralyzing the activities in the oil and gas sectors, this is in protest to a breach of agreement by the Bureau of Public Enterprises (BPE) on the sale of the refineries", he said.
The Bureau of Public Enterpises (BPE) had last week sold 51 per cent federal government equity in the Port Harcourt Refinery to Bluestar Oil Services Limited Consortium , owned by Aliko Dangote's Equity Energy Resources, Femi Otedola's Zenon Oil and Transnational Corporation for a total amount of $561millon.
The sole bidder for Kaduna Refinery, China National Petroleum Corporation failed to match the reserve price after offering $102m.
According to Elibe, "Our unions were not opposed to privatization, we only resented the manner that the BPE sold PH refinery without the necessary due diligence. It was in the same manner it sold out our monumental investment in the Stallion House without our consent.
"The union and the BPE had signed Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) part of which was that BPE would finalize the labour issues that are associated with the sale of the refineries and give the unions three weeks to process to their members.
And that the unions would carry out their on due diligence on the prospective buyers," he said.
"Is it not curious that government is in such a rush to sell these refineries, even when the buyers have not carried out due diligence on them," he asked.
"Our workers will not allow the new ones access to the refinery unless the fate of the over four thousand workers to go are known and accepted by the unions."
Nigeria Oil Woes Raise Price Above $70
LONDON: Oil rose above $70 a barrel on Monday after assailants broke into an oil well in Nigeria, reminding investors of the risk to supply from the world's eighth largest exporter.
Unknown assailants broke into the disused well operated by Total on Monday, causing a minor spill, a company spokesman said. There were no injuries nor any impact on oil output.
"Nigeria is still very much on top of the list in terms of risk," said Olivier Jakob, oil analyst at Petromatrix. "The market is going to stay very edgy on Nigerian news." London Brent, now more representative of the global market than US oil, was up 72 cents at $70.14 having earlier risen to $70.29. US crude was up 37 cents at $65.31.
Sources at private security firms had earlier reported an attack on a Total oil facility in Nigeria using high explosives. Total said no explosives were used.
Violence has surged in Africa's top oil producer since February 2006, cutting a third of Nigeria's output and forcing thousands of expatriates to evacuate the volatile region.
Monday's intra-day high stands in the way of a further advance for Brent, based on the use of past price moves to predict the market's future direction, traders said. "Technically, we have to break through $70.30," said Rob Laughlin, an oil broker at Man Financial. "I think the market will probably have another test to the upside."
Iran: Prices also drew support from Iran, the world's fourth largest oil exporter, pressing ahead with its atomic work.
A senior Iranian official said on Saturday the country has started building its first domestically made atomic power plant. A move, which could deepen a standoff over Iran's nuclear programme. The West fears Iran's atomic work is aimed at making weapons. Tehran says it only wants to produce electricity.
"In the next decade Iran will be one of the most talked-about countries in the world regarding domestic nuclear energy," Mohammad Saeedi of Iran's Atomic Energy Organization was quoted as saying by the ISNA news agency.
German Invitation Sparks Controversy
Germany has reportedly invited Nigeria's President- Elect Umaru Yar'Adua to attend next month's Group of Eight (G8) industrialized summit. The invitation has attracted wide condemnation from Nigeria's main opposition parties, claiming it would legitimize what they say were illegitimate April elections. But a German government spokesman said his country is only following a tradition of inviting Nigeria, among other African countries, to the high profile meeting.
Shehu Garba is the spokesman for Nigeria's Vice-President Atiku Abubakar, who was the presidential candidate for the opposition Action Congress party. From the capital, Abuja he tells the Voice of America that Nigerians now know who their true friends are.
"The people of this country do not matter to the interest of the industrialized countries of the world. From time pre-colonial to the colonial and the postcolonial period, their pre-occupation has always been about raw materials, and in the case of Nigeria, oil. It is the confirmation of the fact that crude oil to the West is more important than the 160 million people of this country, and that they would do nothing to compromise their interest, the smooth flow of crude oil to their own countries," Garba noted.
He said the invitation would possibly hurt the president-elect since he faces what Garba described as the biggest legal challenge in Nigeria's history.
"We think that at the same time they are not fair to the PDP (People's Democratic Party) candidate Umaru Yar' Adua because this man ought to be getting ready to face the greatest legal challenge in his life. This is going to be the biggest legal challenge to any election ever in the history of this country. He needs to be in the country to concentrate and to face these challenges. He himself does not need his attention to be divided by such invitations that would take him out of the country," he said.
Garba said Nigerians are the only people who can determine who is their legitimate president.
"Legitimacy can only proceed from the Nigerian people. It is not foreign countries that will confer leadership on the Nigerian people. We are the ones who will choose who would lead us and we will live with the consequences with our own choice. In this case the Nigerian people are saying, they have not even made the choice, they have not been allowed to choose who will lead them, and they are going to the courts to say that they be allowed to exercise their franchise," Garba pointed out.
He said Nigerians increasingly are feeling their own interests are being ignored by the outside world.
"It helps the Nigerian people to know who their real friends are, and yes there is a sense of betrayal, especially when you look at countries that Nigeria in the past had helped to come out of their own unfortunate situations, and then they are the ones who are turning around to support the imposition of this illegality on the Nigerian people," he said.
Garba blamed some European countries for not looking out for the well being of Nigerians.
"For such countries like Britain and some of its co-travelers in Europe, there had never been any pretension about the fact that their own love for Nigeria (exists) in so far as we have the raw materials that they need for their industries. This has been their sense of relationship, pre-colonial, colonial period and postcolonial. And nothing has happened to change the character of that relationship between themselves and us here," he noted.
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