Omowumi Iledare, a Professor of Petroleum Economics, has advocated the need for implementation strategy of the Petroleum Industry Act 2021 provisions to promote industry solutions to optimize industry efficiency, institutional effectiveness, stakeholders’ equity and justice, and business professional ethics.
He gave the suggestion at virtual event with the theme: Petroleum Industry Act Implementation: Balancing the Petroleum Sector Quardrilemma in Nigeria, organised by Society for Petroleum Engineers, SPE, Abuja Section in Collaboration with Emmanuel Egbogah Foundation.
He stated that the consequences of the quadrilemma in the petroleum sector on energy availability, energy accessibility, and energy affordability are quite obvious in Nigeria.
He, however, said PIA implementation can address the issues.
“Conceptually, PIA framers disavow political expediency, prebendalism and elitism and strategically sets a framework to promote “Technical and resource allocative efficiency in the post PIA Era, Effective manpower development and deployment in the PIA institutions, Equitability in mutuality of interest of stakeholders in the post PIA era, transparency and accountability in industry governance as mandated in the PIA. Regrettably, a “business-as-usual” implementation strategy that is at variance with the PIA 2021 framers, looks more like putting a new wine in an old wine bottle, and this may be critically consequential in the post PIA era, Iledare,who is also Abuja Former Director, SPE Africa Region, Society of Petroleum Engineers Board of Directors, USA said.
He spoke on sub-optimal industry performance indicators, saying oil production was declining and crude + condensate production 1994-2017 capacity shrinking.
He also said gradual shift to high-cost low value barrels and Nigeria slipped out of top-10 producers, adding that loss of market shares even in traditionally strong areas, Nigeria suffered from serious funding gaps and missed opportunities making it impossible to recover”.
He said: “The country is increasingly losing competitiveness and resource base dipping. So also declining exploration effort, development effort only to produce, not to replace volumes and FIDs come once in a blue moon. Activities also dwindled and almost dried up in the delta which made Companies to reduce staff and divesting assets. Restiveness began to build up and Crude theft become a way of survival, and later become big business. So also insecurity becoming a permanent problem”.
SOURCE: independent.ng
