The Petroleum Industry Governance Bill (PIGB), recently passed by the Senate, when concurred to by the House of Representatives and assented to by the president, will institute a new governance structure in the management of the nation’s oil industry assets and its manager, the Nigerian National Petroleum Company (NNPC).
The PIGB, which is the first leg of the 17-year-old Petroleum Industry Bill (PIB), which has been broken into five separate bills by the 8th Senate, scraps the NNPC, the Department of Petroleum Resources (DPR), the Petroleum Products and Pricing Regulatory Agency (PPPRA) and several government agencies in the oil sector and now creates three new entities to oversee activities in the sector.
The three new entities are the National Petroleum Company (NPC), the National Petroleum Assets Management Commission (NPAMC) and the Nigeria Petroleum Regulatory Commission (NPRC).
Under the new governance structure, the NPC would be an integrated oil and gas company, operating as a fully commercial entity that will run like a private company, while the NPAMC would be a single petroleum regulatory commission, which would focus mainly on regulating the industry.
The bill also saddles the commission with the responsibility for health and safety regulations in the industry, and would collaborate with the Ministry of Environment on environmental issues.
