Draft Bill Proposes Repeal of Oil, Gas Laws
From Damilola Oyedele in Abuja, 08.05.2008
A draft bill to seek legitimacy for the proposed new structures in the oil and gas sector and to seek the repeal of all existing laws in the sector had been presented to President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua by the presidential committee on Oil and Gas Sector Reform Implementation headed by Dr. Rilwanu Lukman.
The bill, which is intended to facilitate the oil and gas sector reform, is seeking the repeal of the Petroleum Act, Petroleum Profits Tax Act, Petroleum Products Pricing Regulatory Authority Act, Petroleum Equalization Fund Act, Petroleum Technology Development Fund Act and the creation of the National Petroleum Asset Management Agency, National Petroleum Research Centre, National Petroleum Directorate and National Petroleum Inspectorate, among other new agencies.
President Yar’Adua, while receiving the draft at the State House in Abuja yesterday, stated that the government would look into it and present it to the National Assembly for consideration. He added that it would be part of a memo adopted by the minister of energy for consideration and passage by Federal Executive Council later in the week. This, Yar’Adua stated, would form a critical step for the implementation of the recommendation of the report.
“We will also engage immediately in undertaking critical steps to consult the National Assembly leadership and also create the opportunity for committee to interact with the Senate and House of Representatives committees on energy and other stakeholders so that, like you suggested, there will be a total buy in by all stakeholders. It is important that Nigeria as a nation identifies itself fully with the reforms that we intend to do as recommended by this committee. “
Yar’Adua reiterated his commitment to reform the petroleum sector with a view to making it “viable, competitive, and highly commercial and profit oriented.” He lamented that the Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) has not measured up to international standards.
“Indeed all of us know that other national oil companies that have come into being, after our national oil company, are now by far ahead of us because they have restructured and operating in a manner that this report proposes to organize our petroleum sector and have a truly national oil company that will be commercially and profit-oriented and that will compete with other national oil companies elsewhere in the world”,
Dr. Lukman, while explaining on the aims of the bill, stated that the bill would provide for the incorporation of the NNPC into a limited liability company.
“We have provided for the incorporation of the loose joint ventures that are operating in the oil industry into proper joint venture companies, not only to make them more efficient and transparent but also to raise whatever fund they require from the money market like other oil companies do without the oil industry having to turn to the coffers of the federal government to finance their operations.”
He added: “the main thrust of the reform is to put the industry on even a keen, transparent, to make it more proactive and more importantly to enable the country to realize its full potential in the oil and gas sector, and also for us to encourage more participation by our people in the industry which is the life-line of the national economy. We have suggested and postulated new organizations, new organs to carry out these reform programmes, including the reforms of the existing ones and restructuring them into viable structures that we hope will work more efficiently, more proactively and more responsive to the challenges that the Nigerian oil industry finds itself in the moment.”
“We have prepared in the process a draft bill to go with the recommendation and this draft bill provides in some sense for the realignment of some of the existing laws in some case creating of new laws to make it more up to date and more importantly to put the oil industry on a much more key so that it can run better. The law itself is intended to make it clear the different roles of the different organs of government for some of the confusion we had in the past is the overlapping responsibility and authority to be clarified so that new structures that are going to be in place will have a clear-cut mandate of what is required of them and so that there will be no confusion in those structures so that the whole industry will work efficiently than in the past.”
