The Ministry for Petroleum will pass the long-awaited Petroleum Industrial Bill, PIB to the National Assembly by end of the month.
Minister of State for Petroleum, Chief Timipre Sylva in an interview on in ARISE television, said the revised PIB will get to the House for passage into law.
He said: “It (the PIB) has not been watered down. I don’t know who has seen the bill. It’s still in draft. It has gone through several modifications. That’s the whole idea. You can’t change the laws very easily.
“It tells you that when we are able to pass the bill, it won’t change for a long time because it has taken us about 20 years to get to where we are. It’s now ready to go to the National Assembly. But it has not been watered down.
“Everything has been done in the national interest and in the interest of Nigeria and we are hoping that in the next two weeks, we will be ready to go to the National Assembly, and then people can talk. Before seeing the bill, you can’t say it has been watered down.
“It’s a bill at the foundation of the main industry. There are lots of parts to it: community, government, industry, everybody’s interest has to be accommodated.
“We have been able to take a lot of interests on board. Not everybody will be on the same page. There’s no way government and private sector will be on the same page 100 percent, but what we have tried to do is to narrow the gap as much as possible.
“Right now, we are ready to go to the National Assembly, so we can get this bill passed,” he said.
SOURCE: sweetcrudereport.com