The Petroleum and Natural Gas Senior Staff Association of Nigeria on Tuesday said it would meet the Presidential Implementation Committee on Wednesday as part of ongoing efforts to resolve concerns arising from President Bola Tinubu’s recent executive order on oil revenue remittance.

The committee was set up by the president to oversee and coordinate the effective implementation of the new directive on oil and gas revenue remittance.

The President of the union, Festus Osifo, disclosed this during his opening remarks at the National Executive Council meeting of the association held in Abuja, expressing optimism that the dialogue with government officials would yield a compromise.

Osifo said the union had already engaged government representatives over the weekend and on Monday, adding that the meeting with the presidential committee would further discussions aimed at protecting workers and ensuring stability in the oil and gas sector.

He stated, “As PENGASSAN, we are a senior staff association and we are a very reasonable set of people. What we normally do when such issues come on board is to first address a press conference to draw the attention of the government, and the next level would now be engagement. That is actually what we have been doing.

“We have been engaging the government. We had engagement on Sunday, we had engagement yesterday, and we are going to further the engagement on Wednesday by meeting the Presidential Implementation Committee to raise our concerns. From the engagements we have had so far, we think there are some green lights because our case was made clear.

“For us, there is no hidden agenda. We don’t politicise issues. We purely look at how those issues are going to affect our members first, secondly, the industry, and lastly Nigerians.”

The union leader noted that discussions had begun to shift from legal interpretations to the practical impact of the directive on workers and the industry.

He said, “The main cause of the disagreement is that while we have said the directive negates the Petroleum Industry Act, the government said they are relying on constitutional provisions. So we are coming from two divergent positions. But beyond the process, we have now moved into the substance.

“And that substance is: how will this impact our members? Before the PIA, profit oil was paid to the federation account and the account remitted back a management fee. This management fee is what is being used to cater for the salaries and allowances of our members.”

Osifo explained that the management fee was critical to funding the personnel involved in supervising production sharing contracts.

He said, “There are individuals and comrades who are carrying out the management of these PSCs. They are interfacing with Shell, TotalEnergies, ExxonMobil and all the operators, reconciling accounts and ensuring Nigeria is not cheated. These people must be paid. That is the conversation we are having currently.