Ayodele Adegbuyi, Abuja
WORRIED by the distruption of crude exploration in the Niger Delta region and the consequent loss of revenue to the country, the Senate is set to... probe the current military actions in the Niger Delta to determine its impact on the 2009 budget.
Chairman of the Senate Committee on Upstream Petroleum, Senator Lee Maeba, who spoke to reporters yesterday in Abuja, confirmed that the Joint Task Force (JTF) operations had affected the production levels of the oil companies. He said only a comprehensive investigation by the upper chamber could determine the real impact of the military onslaught. Maeba explained that the probe, to be undertaken in conjunction with the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), would give a conclusive impact assessment of the war on the oil companies and the effect it could have on budget implementation. His words: “When we resume, we plan to conduct a survey on the companies to know the effect of the security operations on their own production. We want to find out how the operations is hurting them (oil companies). We will discuss with the companies so that we will know their losses, the cost of rehabilitation and in fact the cost of shutdown,” Maeba said. | 
Crises 
