FG set to splits NNPC with new PIB

By OdunewuSegun

The Federal Government is set to break up the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation into two if the National Assembly passed into law the new Petroleum Industry bill (PIB) which has also been split for easy passage.

Under the draft legislation, the NNPC will be split in two – the Nigeria Petroleum Assets Management Co (NPAM) and a National Oil Company (NOC) – rather than a series of units as envisaged by the stalled 2012 bill.

The NOC will be run on commercial lines and partly privatised while NPAM is expected to manage assets “where the government is not obligated to provide any upfront funding”.

National Daily gathered that the federal government is planning to jettison the controversial Petroleum Industry Bill (PIB), replacing it first with a law to overhaul the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) which aims to close loopholes that bred corruption in the entity.

The old bill which had faced serious criticism because of some clauses has been in the National Assembly for years, but lawmakers have never agreed on every aspect of the 200-page Petroleum Industry Bill (PIB). Now the government hopes that by submitting a series of bills, individually more modest in scope than the 2012 PIB, it will have a better chance of winning parliamentary approval and reforming the sector.

The first new bill is entitled; “Petroleum Industry Governance and Institutional Framework Bill 2015” and repeals the act that created NNPC which contained legal grey areas that allowed mismanagement to go unchecked and billions of dollars in revenues to go seemingly unaccounted for as operating costs rocketed.