‘Arik grounding may affect oil workers’

Nigeria’s effort to ramp up daily oil production may suffer a setback of 130,000 barrels per day following the grounding of Arik Air.

Our correspondent reliably gathered that Arik and one of the international oil companies in Nigeria are in a contract to fly oil workers to an oil field in Osubi, Delta State.

The oil field produces an average of 130,000 barrels per day.

Insiders who did not want to be mentioned said Arik would no longer fly the oil workers to the field after it had been grounded.

The PUNCH reports that trips were abruptly stalled on Tuesday after the Nigerian Airspace Management Agency grounded an aircraft owned by Arik over a court order instituted by the airline’s creditor and billionaire businessman, Arthur Eze.

Eze had approached the court in protest against his unpaid $2.5m by the founder of Arik Air, Johnson Arumemi-Ikhide.

In a statement by the spokesperson of NAMA, Abdullahi Musa, on Tuesday, the agency said the development stemmed from an enforcement action by the FCT High Court on July 19, 2024, which involved attaching Arik’s planes to secure the debt.

“We have decided to comply with the effect of the Supreme Court order, by grounding the aircraft (the subject of dispute) so that they are not taken out of the jurisdiction of the court or tampered with in a way as to frustrate the courts,” the statement read partly.

Our correspondent gathered that Arik had hitherto flown the IOC’s staff to the oil field in Osubi with its Q-400, which is also grounded.

Nigeria’s daily oil production was 1.25 million barrels per day as of June.

The Federal Government has been making efforts to increase production, especially as local refineries are nearing completion.

However, this may be affected by the lack of activity at the Osubi oil field.

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