THE FEDERAL Government has said that it would not take it lightly with any player in its oil and gas industry including big oil firms which seek to subvert the local content policy in the industry.

Observers claimed on Sunday that industry watchers were seeing the warning as being directed at oil majors alleged to be frustrating the efforts of the authorities as far as the local content policy is concerned.

The big oil firms operating in the Niger Delta, the main oil and gas basin of Nigeria, their honey moon is over in subverting the policy. A Federal Government agency on local content, has warned that government would no longer condone any act of sabotage on the issue.

The executive secretary of Nigerian Local Content Development and Monitoring Board, Ernest Nwapa, an engineer handed down the warning in Warri, the commercial nerve centre of Delta State at the weekend while inspecting and inaugurating some facilities of a local oil servicing company.

He said: “The Nigerian Local Content has come to stay and we are encouraged by what FENOG Nigeria Limited is doing. Government is really impressed with the giant strides of FENOG.” It was however, gathered that the company is one of leading local players in the oil and gas industry which industry watchers said has a huge investments running into billions of dollars in the Niger Delta and has absorbed hundreds of youths out of the choked labour market.

“The Federal Government has directed us to find strategies to encourage local companies like FENOG Nigeria Limited to pick up goods because the government is resolutely committed to the Local Content Policy,” Nwapa said. The board chief executive officer has accordingly warned that any of the oil majors found to be violating the local content policy would be appropriately sanctioned.

“Government will not tolerate deliberate frustration of the indigenous companies by denying them of patronage in the oil and gas industry,” he said.

By Daily Independent of July 27, 2011