The Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, Timipre Sylva, said on Friday the Federal would continue discussions with oil-producing communities in the Niger Delta on the three percent operational costs allocated to them in the Petroleum Industry Bill (PIB).

The minister stated this when a group of Ijaw elders, leaders, and other stakeholders visited him in Abuja.

Sylva, who tasked host communities on effective management of funds, decried the situation where communities in the Bonny Island could not access funds paid to them by the Nigeria Liquefied Natural Gas Company (NLNG).

The minister said he had extracted the multinational oil firms’ commitment to relocate their headquarters to the Niger Delta.

He urged elders in the region to continue to sensitise communities on the protection of public assets in their areas.

Sylva said: “We are planning, alongside the Minister of Information and Culture, to hold town hall meetings in the host communities after the presidential assent to the PIB.

We need to have more stakeholders’ engagement on the three percent allocation to the communities. People need to know that it is from production costs, not from profit. The production cost is always higher than the profits.

“Today, I can tell you that we are on the last mile of the oil economy. Economies around the world are now discussing renewable fuel.

“We must understand that very soon, we may wake up and discover that oil is not as valuable a commodity as we thought.

“Coal did not finish before the world moved away from it. There is still a lot of coal deposits in Enugu, but if you give some of it to someone, he may not appreciate it because the world has moved away from coal.”