Industry surprised at NNPC’s expatriate hire
Sopuruchi Onwuka
Questions are rising in the nation’s petroleum industry over the decision by the Nigerian National Petroleum Company (NNPC) Limited hire an expatriate into a crucial management position in one of its most crucial revenue yielding trading affiliates.
The NNPC Limited had weekend declared Mr jean-Marc Cordier the new Head of NNPC Trading Limited, its crude oil trading business unit.
The announcement comes just as the expatriate Chief Executive Officer of Seplat Energy Plc, Mr Roger Brown, battles deportation over issues related to expatriate quota and violation Nigerian Content policy provisions.
Whereas Mr Brown is an investor and CEO of a multinational independent company that operates a joint venture with the government, the new hire by NNPC comes in purely as paid employee that parades a pedigree of global exposure in the oil trading business.
NNPC stated in a press release that Mr Cordier comes with the experience of a former Vice President of Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC) to boost the ongoing repositioning of the new national company for improved growth, better performance and service delivery.
The French/Swiss national, according to NNPC, holds a robust education in corporate finance and over three decades of experience in oil, oil derivates, risk management and trading. And apart from ADNOC, Mr Cordier is said to hold experience in trading roles in his past employment with Total and Addax.
The statement from NNPC also appears to be retroactive as Mr Cordier is said to have been at work with the company far earlier than the declaration.
The announcement sparked concerns in the industry over provisons of the Nigerian Oil and Gas Industry Content Development (NOGICD) Act of 2010 which requires that such opportunities be first shopped in-country.
Some industry personalities including leaders of investment and trading groups in the country also wondered when and how the recruitment was processed, including the mandatory advertisement and other requirements of the Public Procurement Act of due process.
Under the two laws, expatriate quota is approved for importation of services only when there is no internal capacity for such roles. And the NNPC which has run the oil trading arm if its many business portfolios for decades is also supposed to have groomed a reservoir of competent market players in the global crude trade.
The current Group Chief Executive of the national oil company, Mallam Mele Kyari, is groomed in the trading company of the group, from where he ascended the overall head of the company. Questions are in the air about competency level in the entire company if it cannot fill roles from the Nigerian community of trading moguls.
From the group of trading marketing companies in the country to workers unions in the industry, the recruitment of Mr Cordier came as a surprise, with many of them seeking clarification on the process.
Our efforts to get comments from the Nigerian Content Development and Monitoring Board (NCDMB) and the Ministry of Internal affairs on the expatriate quota approval for the hiring of Mr Cordier did not yield responses.
