THE Special Taskforce on the Review of Petroleum Industry Bill (PIB) and the Petroleum Industry Bill Technical Committee yesterday submitted their reports to President Goodluck Jonathan at the Presidential Villa, Abuja.
With the submission, the revised draft of the PIB would be ready for submission to the National Assembly within two weeks.
The revised draft bill is expected to be discussed first and approved by the Federal Executive Council (FEC) at its next meeting on Wednesday. It will then be sent to the National Assembly for enactment into law.
Minister of Petroleum Resources, Deziani Allison-Madueke, told journalists shortly after the draft bill was presented to President Jonathan that with the submission, which is the culmination of a 50-year effort to reform the petroleum sector, “we will go forward now as directed and prepare for the presentation to the Federal Executive Council. My assumption therefore is that within the next 10 to 14 days, it will be in their hands. But again, that will be at the pleasure of Mr. President. Ours is to present it and review it with government stakeholders as it is done for every bill that is done for the government to present.”
She added: “This bill has been 50 years in the making, it has taken a long time. It went through the entire gamut of the sixth session of the National Assembly and it did not get promulgated into law. In agreement with the seventh assembly, we took it back and completely reviewed it again.
“This is not a small bill. It is a critical bill for this country and for our oil and gas sector. Therefore at this point, government will do the final review and put it in front of the FEC for approval. Part of that process is that it will go through the Attorney-General’s office. Nigerians should understand that we have been in a hurry for a long time to put this bill out but we will try to ensure that by the time it enters the National Assembly, we are very comfortable with it and we are putting forward a bill that we believe the oil and gas sector can stand on and can grow on for many years to come in this country.”
Speaking on the differences between the new bill and the former one, Mrs Allison-Madueke said: “The teams have reconfigured the various sections. The fiscal regimes used are so much different. The manner and templates for various calculations have been looked at differently, and other fiscal areas. The issue of domestic gas and fiscal regime for domestic gas have been looked at robustly. The issue of the reconfiguration of the NNPC is to ensure that going forward, it becomes the commercial entity that it is supposed to be and we can actually grow a first rate national oil company that over the years will grow to compete with other national oil companies such as Petronas and Petrobras. All these have been looked at.
“The administrative roles and some of the others have also been looked at. The Ministry of Petroleum Resources is actually a professionally run ministry and it engages professionals in the oil and gas sector to work within the ministry which is not the case at all now.
“We have professionals now, but they are along the administrative line. We want to ensure that like other agencies of government, there are professionals in the ministry itself so that the ministry is not dependant solely on its technical status.”
Also, the new Managing Director of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), Mr Andrew Yakubu has said that the new management team of NNPC will ensure transparency in its dealings as a way of correcting people’s perceptions about the corporation.
His words: “In the recent past, we have had quite a number of challenges. A lot of eyes are on us on the way we do our business. Those criticisms have been taken on board, my new management will plough them back into the system, we will review our processes and we will reposition NNPC for growth. We will work very hard to work with the Nigerian public, and all the stakeholders. We shall be transparent and responsible. We will work towards changing the perception.”
He therefore described his appointment and that of other members of the management team “as a call to service."
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