Tuesday, 03 July 2012 00:00

THE Minister of Petro leum Resources, Dezani Allison Maduekwe, has said that the Petroleum Industry Bill (PIB) would tackle all the challenges in the nation’s oil and gas industry.

Allison Maduekwe stated this as the Special Task force on the Review of Petroleum Industry Bill and the Petro-leum Industry Bill Technical Committee submitted their reports to the President and other stake holders at the presidential Villa at the week-end.

While noting that the re-vised draft would be dis-cussed by the Federal Ex-ecutive Council (FEC) this week, she said: “We will pre-pare for the presentation to the Federal Executive Coun-cil, 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 re-
view it with government stakeholders as it is done for every bill.

“This bill has been 50 years in the making, it has taken a long time. It went through the entire gamut of the sixth ses-sion of the National Assem-bly and it did not get promul-gated into law. In agreement with the seventh Assembly, we took it back and com-pletely 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 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.

“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 has been looked at robustly. The issue of the reconfiguration of the NNPC to ensure that 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 of the likes of Petronas, Petrobras etc.

“All these have been looked at. The administrative roles and some of the others have also been looked at. The intention to ensure that going foward the Ministry of Petroleum Resources is actually a professionally run ministry and that it engages professionals in the oil and gas sector.

“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.

“A lot of details have gone into it; we have looked at the fiscal regime, we have looked at the reconfiguration of the NNPC to ensure that going forward it becomes the commercial entity it should have been all along. We have also looked at other administrative roles within the gamut of the sector as well. I think that the teams have done a very good job; we are very pleased,” she stressed.