Oil multinational, Chevron Nigeria Limited, yesterday, intensified its lobby of host communities in the Brass and Southern Ijaw Communities of Bayelsa State as they protest against the noticeable damages on their environment by the recent fire outbreak at the gas rig on the off-shore facility in the area.
The officials of Chevron, during the tour of the communities tagged “Thank You” tour, met with community leaders under the auspices of the NNPC/Chevron’s Global Memorandum of Understanding (GMoU).
The oil giant presented consumables and other relief materials worth millions of naira to the concerned communities. Some of the items include bags of rice, garri, beans, tubers of yam and cows, jerry-cans of groundnut oil, palm oil, frozen fish, chicken, cartons of beverages, cartons of tin tomato, bags of salt and sugar.
The Chairmen of “Keffes and Dodo River Regional Development Committees under the GMOU, Messrs Christopher Tuodor and Berry Negresse, while addressing the delegation of Chevron staff, commended the company for the food items.
According to them, the gesture by the NNPC/Chevron Joint Venture was indicative of the company’s social responsibility and sensitivity to the needs of the people and added that this would go a long way to further strengthen the cordial relationship the company has with the communities.
“Over the years, our communities and NNPC/Chevron have had mutually-beneficial relationship. It is unfortunate that a fire incident occurred on the offshore rig undertaking gas drilling operations for the company. Our people were naturally agitated due to fear of potential threat to human and aquatic lives. We are mostly fishermen and women but we know that what happened was an accident and because we are good neighbours with NNPC/Chevron, our people volunteered to assist in the rescue and evacuation of the workers on the rig as at the time of the incident,”.