Thursday, July 20, 2017

New oil policy approved by Nigeria

The Federal Government has approved a new policy on oil administration in the country.

The approval is sequel to a memo presented to the Federal Executive Council, FEC, by the Minister of State, Petroleum, Ibe Kachikwu.

Mr. Kachikwu said the approval was given at FEC meeting Of Wednesday chaired by the acting president, Yemi Osinbajo.

Briefing State House correspondents at the end of the meeting, Mr. Kachikwu said his ministry had already began implementing some of the policy.

“We are working assiduously to exit the importation of fuel in 2019 and we also captured the cash calls changes we have done which enables the sector to fund itself through incremental volumes,” he said.

The minister also said the new policy captured the reorganisation in the Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation, NNPC, for efficiency and to enable accountability.

“It captured the issues in the Niger Delta and what we needed to do as a government, to focus on stability and consistency in the sector.

“It is a very comprehensive 100-page document that’s deals with all the spectrum in the industry,” he said.

Mr. Kachikwu said the last oil policy was in 2007.

“It’s has been 10 Years and you are aware that the dynamics of the oil industry has changed dramatically.

“Apart from the fact of fluidity in pricing and uncertainty in terms of the price regime in crude, we are pushing for a refining processing environment and moving away from exporting as it were to refining petroleum product, that’s one change you will see.

“Secondly how we sell our crude is going to be looked at, there is a lot of geographical market we need to look at in the long term, contracting and sales as opposed to systemic contracting that we have been doing.

“Those are the fundamentals, it’s a document if well executed will fundamentally take the change process that we began in 2015 to its logical conclusion hopefully in the next couple of years,” he said.

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