The Federal Government, Tuesday, stated that until all the components of the Petroleum Industry Bill (PIB), are passed by the National Assembly and assented to by the Presidency, no new licensing rounds for oil wells would be conducted, Vanguard reports.
Speaking in Abuja, at the Nigeria Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (NEITI), symposium on the PIB, Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, Mr. Ibe Kachikwu, disclosed that the Federal Government would only award new licenses for oil production under new legislations. Kachikwu, who was represented by his Senior Technical Adviser on Efficiency, Mr. Johnson Awoyomi, emphasized the need for transparency and clear policy direction in the Nigerian petroleum industry.
Kachikwu said stakeholders must relish the urgency of the current stage at which the various petroleum bills are, stating that all hands should be on deck to making sure the omnibus bill achieves what it is meant to achieve. The minister lamented that the aggregation of laws which had governed the Nigerian oil and gas sector over the years had become archaic and no longer competitive and needed to be reviewed and harmonized into a comprehensive law.
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