Imperative of the Petroleum Industry Bill (PIB)

Last week the Petroleum Industry Bill (PIB) presented to the National Assembly by President Buhari passed first reading at the Senate. Same is expected at the House of Representatives when plenary resumes.

From the statements coming from both the National Assembly and the Executive and the sense of urgency and purpose exhibited so far, there is every reason to hope that the PIB will finally be passed under the present dispensation.

Since it was first introduced during the administration of President Olusegun Obasanjo by his then Special Adviser on Petroleum, the late Dr Rilwan Lukman, the PIB has experienced a chequered and beleaguered history which in many ways mirrors the current unsatisfactory state of Nigeria’s oil and gas industry.

Right from when it was first introduced, the PIB has been considered by subsequent national assemblies that came and went without it being successfully passed into law. In the process, several versions of the Bill have come up over the years adding to the confusion and inconclusive nature of the passage of the Bill through the legislature.  This has left Nigerians and stakeholders in the oil and gas industry deeply disappointed especially given the primary importance the sector plays in our national development.

To be sure the provisions of the Bill which cuts across technical, fiscal, commercial, social and governance issues requiring a lot of legislative work appears complex and hence daunting. And it is the main reason the last national assembly gave for concentrating mainly on the governance issues of the Bill alone which it passed and named the Petroleum Industry Governance Bill (PIGB). But because this hardly did justice to the compelling need to have a comprehensive Bill for the industry, the executive declined consent to it.

Essentially, the PIB hopes to harmonise the sixteen different laws currently governing the oil and gas industry into a single comprehensive law that would make it easy for the efficient operation of the sector.

It is no gainsaying that the oil and gas industry is beset by a myriad of issues including moribund refineries, poor state of infrastructure, humongous cash calls to joint venture partners among many.

At the centre of all this is the role and position of the Nigeria National Petroleum Company (NNPC) as the giant conglomerate superintending oil and gas operations in Nigeria. It is disheartening to note that the NNPC has hardly lived up to expectation in developing this very crucial sector of our national lives. Its counterparts in other oil producing countries and even non-oil producing ones have taken up the gauntlet and established a niche in their countries, thereby making them competitive players in the global oil industry.

As the government’s representative in the oil and gas industry, the NNPC should appropriately be the starting point for the much needed comprehensive reform of the sector. It is, therefore, necessary that the current version of the Bill should seek to unbundle the NNPC from the inefficient behemoth it is to the commercially oriented entity it should be.

This, as a matter of urgent necessity, calls for the cooperation of all stakeholders in seeing the passage of the Bill into law. All hands must be on deck to ensure the passage of the Bill.

If developments in the global oil industry within the decade are anything to go by, we need not be told that reform of our oil and gas sector is both timely and necessary. Alternative sources of energy are being rapidly developed which will progressively lessen the world’s dependence on hydrocarbons and non-renewable fuels.

All these developments should spur us into ending our prevarications towards the reform of our oil and gas industry in line with emerging opportunities and global best practices.