New Telegraph

PIB suffers fresh setback over COVID-19

The ill-fated Petroleum Industry Bill (PIB) has again suffered fresh setback buoyed by the novel Coronavirus pandemic.
Group Managing Director, Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), Mele Kyari, who stated this, added that the bill would be passed before the end of the year.
The government was aiming to pass the sprawling legislation overhaul by the end of July, but the NNPC boss said that lockdown across Nigeria had pushed back the timetable.
“We have lost time because of COVID-19,” he said on a webinar, “but I know within this year we will be able to deliver on this.”
In the works for nearly two decades, the bill governs everything from oilfield licensing rounds to the share of oil wealth that stays in the Niger Delta region which produces most of Nigeria’s crude.
Companies have said they cannot invest significantly in Nigeria until the bill is passed citing regulatory uncertainty as a hurdle along with low oil prices and an increase in government’s take of deepwater oil revenue passed last year.
Kyari also said government was close to announcing a deal to build a 200,000 barrel per day (bpd) condensate splitter and that it would partner with private companies for the money and the expertise to fix its own ailing oil refineries and pipelines.
He acknowledged that previous efforts to fix the refineries, which were totally shut down in April, were “bungled”, but said he was confident Nigeria could soon produce all the fuel it consumes.

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