“I am happy to announce to you that this (Wednesday) morning, Mr. President forwarded the Petroleum Industry Bill to the National Assembly,” Reuters quoted her as saying at the Presidential Villa, Abuja.
The long-delayed bill could be one of the most important pieces of legislation in the history of Nigeria, changing everything from fiscal terms to the make-up of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation.
Several drafts had been drawn up in recent years but were scrapped or re-written because government, lawmakers and foreign oil companies could not agree on the details.
The Federal Executive Council on Wednesday last week approved the PIB prepared by the Ministry of Petroleum Resources, Alison-Madueke confirmed this to State House correspondents at the end of the council’s weekly meeting.
She said the bill, which is an aggregate of about 16 laws in the oil and gas industry, would go a long way in making the nation’s petroleum industry the preferred destination of oil and gas investors.
She said that one of the highlights of the new bill was the unbundling of the NNPC to give room for vibrant successor companies.
Some of the companies to be unbundled from the NNPC, according to her, are the National Oil Company, National Gas Company and National Asset Management Corporation, which will now be private sector-driven.
Alison-Madueke said that new agencies, such as the National Frontiers Exploration Services, Host Community Fund and Regulatory Inspectorate for the downstream sector, would also emerge as unique departments reporting directly to the minister.
She said, “The new bill looks at new areas that are quite critical and first of all they are the inspectorate, the regulatory agencies for the oil and gas sector to ensure that they are independent and that they can actually do the regulation.
“We also looked, of course, at the unbundling of the NNPC, which has been very critical; created out of the old NNPC a National Oil Company, which will be independent. It will be a registered company, which will have shareholding and it will be ceded acreages and will also, as we face and implement the PIB, take over current infrastructure in the oil and gas sector like refineries, depots and certain downstream entities as well as production sharing contracts.”
The minister also said, “We created an Asset Management Corporation as a holding company, which will operate an asset management company that will be a competitive private sector- driven company, and it will hold what is today the joint company hydro carbon assets of the nation.
“We expect, of course that as time goes on, the company will operate essentially along the line of private sector to give the federation the right returns on investments in the hydro carbon sector. We looked at a couple of new agencies as well; the National Frontiers Exploration Services unit that will reside in the new Petroleum Policy Bureau, which will be a technical arm of the minister’s secretariat.”
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