26 November 2015, Abuja – The Senate Committee on Gas on Wednesday, pledged to ensure the implementation of the Nigerian Gas Supply and Pricing Act which was enacted and accented to by President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua, in 2008.
Chairman of the committee, Senator Bassey Akpan, stated this during the inaugural sitting of his panel in Abuja.
Akpan said, “That Act actually stipulates what the domestic gas supply obligation of every single international oil company operating on the soil of Nigeria is. It also stipulates the penalty on the issue of gas flaring.
“By the special grace of God, we will be engaging the various stakeholders from next week, Tuesday. We will first of all, talk to the regulators, like the Ministry of Petroleum Resources.
“We will also talk to the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, the Department of Petroleum Resources, and we will also talk to the gas aggregator.”
Akpan assured Nigerians that his committee would do everything possible to ensure that the law guiding the gas sector was in place.
He said it was after the enforcement that the senate will begin to look at the areas where it would enforce the law.
Akpan said, ” What we have found out here is that the law is not being enforced. One thing is to have a law, another thing is for you to ensure that every stakeholder, every operator adheres strictly to the conditions of the law.
“So, we will be looking at the law because this is an era of the rule of law. The president believes in the rule of law, the president believes that the oil and gas sector must be completely sanitized and that is what we are all here to do.
“We are going to carry out a very robust oversight and we will not compromise in terms of international best practices”
- Punch