The Secretary and Legal Adviser of the Nigerian Upstream Petroleum Regulatory Commission, Olayemi Anyanechi, says the commission has been sued in over 70 cases in the past seven months of this year.
Anyanechi stated this on Thursday during a stakeholders’ consultation on the Alternative Dispute Resolution Centre’s rules of procedure.
According to her, the commission was dragged into different cases by various groups or individuals, including host communities, saying the NUPRC keeps spending government money on such cases.
Emphasising the significance of the ADRC, she noted that the Nigerian oil and gas industry is very important and can get very contentious and litigious.
“So we have so many cases. When the commission was founded, one of the things it focused on was the ability to settle those disputes,” she stated.
Anyanechi disclosed that most of the disputes that arose from the 2020 marginal bid round had been settled out of court, adding that the Petroleum Industry Act also gave rise to some cases among host communities.
“With the twilight of the 2020 marginal field bid round, for instance, there were a lot of disputes and we actively engaged those awardees. We sat them down, we settled those disputes, so we kept a lot of disputes out of the courts.
“If you look at the Nigerian courts now, you wouldn’t find a lot of those marginal field bid-round disputes. Quite a lot of them have been settled. With the PIA, host community issues also gave rise to a lot of disputes and it’s understandable. Our host communities feel that the communities have to be developed a bit more.
“So there are a lot of issues that we understand and we have so many cases in court. For instance, the commission this year alone received about 70 cases and we spent so much of the Federal Government’s money defending matters. So for us, it (ADRC) is important to be able to oversee the industry, and to regulate the industry in a more convivial environment,” Anyanechi submitted.
She added that the Chief Executive Officer of the NUPRC, Gbenga Komolafe, has been working assiduously to make the Alternative Dispute Resolution Centre one that can be a pride of Nigeria and Africa at large.
Earlier, Komolafe said the ADRC marks a significant step forward in the effort to enhance the efficiency, fairness, and effectiveness of alternative dispute resolution within the upstream industry.