Date Published: 10/16/09

OPEC supports PIB

The Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) has thrown its weight behind the oil and gas sector reform as proposed in the Petroleum Industry Bill currently before the National Assembly.

The Secretary General of OPEC, Dr Abdalla S. El-Badri, gave the endorsement at a technical session held by the visiting OPEC team to trade ideas with top management staff of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) and senior government functionaries at the board room of the corporation.

El-Badri who spoke on a wide range of issues affecting OPEC member countries, said Nigeria was on the right path in proposing the law to free the NNPC of regulatory roles in order to enable it concentrate on production and compete effectively with the international oil companies (IOCs).

“What you are doing is very correct. I am speaking from a personal experience as a former Minister of Petroleum in Libya. A national oil company should concentrate on production as a partner of the IOCs. Regulation should be left to the ministry or another agency as proposed in the Petroleum Industry Bill. From experience, I know that a national oil company cannot effectively regulate the industry where it operates in joint ventures with IOCs. It cannot function as a ministry within a ministry,” he said.

He explained that the NNPC and Nigeria stood to benefit more if the corporation is allowed to operate as other national oil companies across the world are run.

Also speaking on the importance of the data and statistics that OPEC makes available to member countries, El-Badri who has served twice as Minister of Petroleum in Libya said governments across the world depend on the organisation’s figures and forecast to make energy policy decisions as the 13 OPEC countries have about 80% of the world’s oil reserve.

Speaking earlier, the Group Managing Director of NNPC, Dr Mohammed Sanusi Barkindo, explained that the lapses experienced in getting Nigeria’s oil production data to OPEC on time was as a result of conflicting roles the corporation has been saddled with over the years.

“But all that would be over when the Petroleum Industry Bill is passed into law as the National Petroleum Directorate (NPD) would take over the role of collating data, processing and sending them to OPEC in a timely fashion,” he said.

However, OPEC’s Senior Statistician, Monika Psenner, in her presentation titled, “The Importance of Data Flow from Member Countries”, acknowledged that the flow of data Nigeria has improved greatly over the last few years.

Dr Tim Okon, Group General Manager, Planning, Strategy and Transformation, NNPC, in his contribution said whatever difficulty that was currently being experienced in data collation would be a thing of the past when the PIB is passed into law.

“The PIB provides for establishment of Electronic Information Management System. All oil companies are mandated by the law to send their production data electronically to Electronic Information Management System and to publish same on their websites. This will facilitate easy collection and collation of data,” he said.