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Nigeria: Yar'Adua Sends New Petroleum Industry Bill to National Assembly
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Leadership (Abuja)
15 May 2008
Posted to the web 15 May 2008
Ese Awhotu
Abuja
President Umaru Musa Yar'adua has sent a new petroleum industry bill that seeks to transform the basic provisions of the national oil and gas policy into law to the National Assembly.
When passed into law, the new petroleum bill is expected to bring about a more efficient and progressive oil and gas industry.
Secretary to the oil and gas sector implementation committee, Dr. Bello Aliyu Gusau, disclosed this at a workshop on the reforms in the oil and gas sector organised by Independent Petroleum Marketers Association of Nigeria (IPMAN), in Abuja.
Gasau explained that the overall objective of the new policy is to reposition the nation's oil and gas industry in view of contemporary challenges within the sector both globally and in the domestic sphere.
"This is the surest way of securing maximum and sustainable value to the nation.," he noted.
He explained further that "the thrust of the new policy revolves around the need to ensure separation and clarity of roles among the different public agencies in the industry,"giving a historical insight into the origin of the policy. Gasau said the new oil and gas policy, which emanated from the reform initiated by the last administration of President Olusegun Obasanjo covers, in a comprehensive manner, all the relevant aspects of the industry, which include upstream, downstream, gas, petrochemicals, and many other industry-related matters.
He did not take it kindly with state and local government administration's in the country as he described them as irresponsible doing nothing but wait for allocations from the federation account instead of seeking other potential avenues available in their states and local government's to generate revenue. "If you wait for appropriation to come to you, knowing that another will come next year, you are irresponsible," he said.
On the problems of the oil industry, Gausau blamed it on the assumption of multiple roles by the various players in the oil industry, "too many players take on more roles than they can handle. The NNPC, for instance, has grown over the years to assume multiple, often conflicting roles, including those of policy formulation, regulation, commercial operations and national assets management," he observed.
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He said this development has made the NNPC to, over the years, become a financial drain pipe to the government without any strategic focus, adding that this was not limited to the NNPC, as the other agencies of government inhabit the same characteristic.
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