FEC approves petroleum policy that will change Nigeria from an oil producing nation to a gas producing country
The Federal Executive Council has authorised the implementation of the Nigerian Petroleum Policy as government bids to end fuel importation by 2019.
Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, Dr Ibe Kachikwu, told State House correspondents after the council’s regular meeting in Abuja on Wednesday that the essence of the new Nigerian Petroleum Policy approved by FEC was to change Nigeria from an oil producing country to a gas producing country.
He explained that the policy focuses on oil and the imperative needed to change in policy in the oil sector, adding that it was geared towards facilitating government’s desire to exit the importation of fuel in 2019.
Kachikwu added: “It captures the re-organisation in the NNPC for efficiency and 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 deals with all the spectrum in the industry.
“The last time this was done was in 2007 and it 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, long term contracting and sales as opposed to systemic contracting 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.”
In her own presentation, Minister of State, Budget and National Planning, Zainab Ahmed, said FEC considered and approved the National Social Protection Policy.
She explained that the policy is a framework which seeks to provide social justice, equity and inclusive growth using a transformative mechanism for mitigating poverty and unemployment in Nigeria.
She recalled that the federal government had commenced the implementation of Social Investment Programme (SIP) in 2016 with each of the programme that had been rolled out including, the School Feeding programme and N-Power programme were drawn from this policy which was in a draft form at the time.
“What we have done is to submit to the council today, a policy that is largely aspirational but seeks to ensure that every Nigerian gets at least a minimum of what is required in terms of human development and protection,” she added.
