Ike Amos
24 April 2018, Sweetcrude, Abuja — Executive Secretary of the Petroleum Technology Development Fund (PTDF) Mr. Aliyu Bello Gusau, Monday stated that the recently passed Petroleum Industry Governance Bill (PIGB) and the other industry bills at the National Assembly did not address a critical issue that had bedeviled the petroleum industry over the years.
Speaking at the 11th Annual International Conference of the Nigerian Association for Energy Economics, NAEE in Abuja, Gusau stated that the Bills failed to incentivize value generation and creation, hence furthering the current rent-seeking behaviour in the oil and gas industry.
He said, “I still believe that oil is still central. The oil industry in Nigeria is the only sector that has the capacity to provide the foundation for that journey. But it cannot be done with the current business model that is focused essentially on the upstream.
“The business of taking oil from the ground and marketing it across the globe has to stop. The only way that the oil and gas industry can provide the foundation for the journey of a post-oil economy is to move from its focus on the upstream, down to the mid-stream and downstream where a value is created.
“This is the area where value, wealth and jobs would be created. This is the area that would create the fertilizer, the electricity, the petrochemicals that we require would all come into play. This should be, going forward, the norm in the Nigerian oil and gas industry.
“What is the strategy to achieve this? Unfortunately, I have gone through all the four Bills of the petroleum industry waiting to become law, I have seen fiscal and regulatory provision about the mid-stream and the downstream, but I have not seen anything in all the four bills that incentivize value generation. This is the challenge I must put forward because this is the key in our journey to a post-oil economy in Nigeria.”
He further stated that Nigeria must immediately commence the journey to a post-oil economy, going by the changing landscape in the global petroleum industry.
He said, “There is no doubt we are very familiar with some of the happenings in the global oil and gas industry. We all know about the impact of the shale gas phenomenon on both pricing and market share for some countries. Anyway you put it, in the increasing quest for cleaner energy, there is no doubt this is going to impact on the Nigerian oil and gas industry. I think we all can attest to that.
“What is not certain is whether we are ready for that. For me, there are great opportunities in this journey. We must seize these opportunities to commence the journey of a post-oil economy.”
