Nigeria: Oil Companies Set to Kill Petroleum Bill

Vanguard

6 March 2011

Nigeria: Oil Companies Set to Kill Petroleum Bill

Less than three months to the end of the present administration, it has emerged that a powerful cabal in the nation's oil and gas sector has commenced a move to stop the passage of the Petroleum Industry Bill, PIB, into law.

As learnt in Abuja, at the weekend, the group is made up of officials of the international oil companies operating in Nigeria and their collaborators in the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, NNPC, as well as the Ministry of Petroleum Resources who have been benefitting from the status quo in the oil and gas industry.

The PIB has passed the second reading in both chambers of the National Assembly and now awaiting the third and final reading before being passed by the federal legislature.

But sources claimed that the cabal that has been hindering the oil and gas sector reform for many decades in the country have vowed to frustrate the Bill.