President Muhammadu Buhari has said the Petroleum Industry Act (P.I.A) remains his administration’s greatest achievement in the energy sector.
The Act signed in 2021 aims to overhaul the petroleum sector in Nigeria by providing legal, governance, regulatory and fiscal framework for the Nigerian Petroleum Industry.
Buhari on Monday at the presidential villa while declaring open his last Nigeria International Energy Summit (NIES) as Commander -in Chief revealed that his administration managed to dismantle some of those challenges the Energy sector was plagued with while working with a lot of people to make it possible.
“The Petroleum Industry Act (P.I.A) remains our biggest achievement in the energy sector. For decades, we were told that because of the various vested interest, it would be near impossible to pass the Bill,” the president said.
“But we made it happen. What we did with the P.I.A., you will all agree with me, was simply revolutionary. And we did not rest on our oars with the enactment of the Act. We moved swiftly into action, scrapped the existing agencies and replaced them with New Regulators; the Nigerian Upstream Petroleum Regulatory Commission (NUPRC) and the Nigerian Midstream and Downstream Petroleum Regulatory Authority (NMDPRA).”
“The Nigerian National Petroleum Company (NNPC) was immediately transformed to a limited liability, the NNPC Ltd with a new brand identity and it is on course to becoming the biggest, most capitalized and most profitable company in the whole of Africa.”
Buhari also highlighted the reason for making the sector a priority of his government.
“Energy was and will remain a top priority of my administration till my last day in the office. That is the reason we paid close attention and birthed a lot of reforms in the sector,” he said.
“We embarked on all these reforms not just because it is good for the energy industry but because it is also good for the overall economy and our efforts, indeed, helped grow our economy and created a lot of jobs.”
Speaking on his goal for economic diversification, the gas sector was a viable means of the transition from crude oil.
“In the natural gas sector, we made a lot of progress. The agenda was the gas revolution. We pushed for the diversification of Nigeria’s economy and drive industrialization through domestic gas utilization. We officially declared Natural Gas as the transition fuel for Nigeria. We launched many initiatives to ensure that natural gas optimization and utilization are a reality.”
“The National Gas Policy of 2017 articulated the policy goals, strategies, and implementation plan to reposition Nigeria as an attractive gas-based industrialized nation through the prioritization of local gas demand requirements and we put in place a strategic framework to achieve the set objectives.”
“We launched the National Gas Transportation Network Code (NGTNC) which was on the drawing table for several years. The network code is a set of rules guiding the use of a gas transportation system, a contractual framework between the network operator and the shippers which provide open and competitive access to gas transportation infrastructure.”