The Petroleum Industry Act (P.I.A) has been described as the biggest achievement of President Muhammadu Buhari-led administration in the country’s energy sector.
OsunDaily News gathered that the president himself disclosed that the PIA remains his greatest achievement in the energy sector.
According to him, “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.
“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.”
The president made this disclosure when he declared opened his last Nigeria International Energy Summit (NIES) as Commander -in Chief on Monday at the villa.
The president said “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.
“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.”
President Buhari also spoke about his goal for economic diversification saying the gas sector was a means of transitioning from crude oil.
He stated that “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.”
It would be recalled that the Act was signed in 2021, after more than a decade at the national assembly.
It aimed to overhaul the petroleum sector in Nigeria by providing legal, governance, regulatory and fiscal framework for the Nigerian Petroleum Industry.
