Nat’l Assembly eyes new power plants through PIB, to deliver bill in 6 months

New gas-to-power infrastructures will spring up across Nigeria when the Petroleum Industry Bill (PIB), which has made provisions for them, becomes law, Deputy Senate President Ovie Omo-Agege said Tuesday.

The legislation would trigger gas projects on a large scale, Omo-Agege stated, which would in turn ramp up the country’s power generation capacity.

“With the expected tremendous increase in activities in the natural gas sector that will come with the new bill, there will be massive networking of natural gas infrastructure, particularly upstream and midstream,” said Otive Igbuzor, who deputised for the lawmaker at a colloquium on PIB and host communities, collaboratively held by OrderPaper Advocacy Initiative and Facility for Oil Sector Transformation.

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He observed that the bill would speed up government’s move to deregulate the petroleum and electricity sectors and generate employment opportunities via the energy industry and related sectors.

The PIB, which had been in the works for 20 years, was sent to the Senate by President Buhari in September for legislative assent and sought to overhaul the regulatory architecture of Africa’s top oil producer.

It would liberalise oil and gas operations by transferring the management and ownership of state-owned Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation into private hands and scrap key regulatory agencies.

Meanwhile, Femi Gbajabiamila – the House of Representatives speaker – has vowed to expedite the passage of the bill in six months without further delay.

“First, the House is determined to pass the bill within the next six months, or probably less, because the clock has already started running from the time it was presented,” he said.

“Two, the House is determined to pass a PIB that is satisfactory to all, I know it is difficult to satisfy everybody, but we will try our best to satisfy everybody,” he told a crew of Oil Producers Trade Section (OPTS), a unit of the Lagos State Chamber of Commerce and Industry on Tuesday in Abuja.

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