Oil & Gas

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Diezani Alison-Madueke, minister of petroleum resources, pleads with the National Assembly not to politicise or personalize the Petroleum Industry Bill before it

|  By Maureen Chigbo  |

ONE key message that came out at the two-day Senate joint committee public hearing on Petroleum Industry Bill, PIB, is that Nigerians should not politicise nor personalise the bill which is to strengthen the oil and gas sector. This is because the responsibility for the exercise of the powers proposed in the Bill for the president and petroleum minister will ultimately rest on any administration in power any time the bill is eventually passed by the National Assembly. Diezani Alison-Madueke, minister of petroleum resources, at the hearing urged stakeholders in the Oil and Gas Industry not to politicise or personalise the Petroleum Industry Bill currently before the National Assembly as it is geared towards providing a win-win scenario for all stakeholders in the petroleum sector.

She argued that it was important for the law to sufficiently empower any administration to act in the best interest of the Nigerian people, stressing that the provision empowering the president and the minister of petroleum resources is not about her or the president as it is not likely that the present administration will be in power when the law gets to full implementation in the years ahead.

“By the time the PIB is fully articulated and implemented the current president and minister of petroleum resources will no longer be in office. This bill takes a while before it is operational.  The proposed transition period after the passage of the Bill is at least three years. Note, there are over 80 regulations to be made for this bill to be operational,” Alison-Madueke said.

According to her, whilst we take best practices from other developed regions, we should also work with the understanding of our own socio-economic and social-cultural norms, and create entities and policies that will work and are not destined to fail from the word-go. Contrary to the impression that the PIB granted enormous powers to the minister of petroleum resources, the powers vested on the minister by the bill are not different from those vested on the minister’s counterparts by the petroleum laws of the United kingdom, Malaysia and Norway. The powers granted the Nigerian minister by the PIB is less than those of her counterparts in the laws of advanced petroleum producing countries, she said.

The PIB establishes a flexible fiscal regime that will increase government take and yet encourage investment in the petroleum sector saying it allows for production-based incentive system which, in the long run, will accommodate every player in the industry. Addressing the concern on the multi-faceted regulatory bodies for the PIB, the minister said this was basically as a result of the complex nature of the industry adding that an unwieldy, mammoth entity that hosts two complete separately run organisations is not a mode of efficiency but the disaggregated regulatory system would enable speedy response to a variety of issues that may arise from time to time.

On the issue of the host communities, the minister noted that it was established to mitigate the human and environmental conditions in the region and to assuage the feelings of the host communities towards oil and gas companies. The PIB seeks to establish a legal, fiscal and regulatory framework that will revolutionise the Petroleum industry in Nigeria stressing that it intends to create a standard business practice, protect health, safety and environment in the course of petroleum exploration and enhance exploration and exploitation of petroleum in Nigeria.

Declaring open the public hearing, Senate President David Mark said the National Assembly was anxious to pass the PIB and urged all the stakeholders to make objective submissions that would create a win-win situation for the federal government, the international oil companies and other operators in the petroleum industry.

It would be recalled that the PIB was based on the report of the Oil and Gas Reform Implementation Committee, OGIC, set up by the federal government 13 years ago to carry out a comprehensive reform of the oil industry.

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