The Federal Government has dismissed media reports that the new draft Petroleum Industry Bill (PIB) sent to National Assembly by President Muhammadu Buhari has recommended scrapping of the Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC).
Minister of State for Petroleum, Timipre Sylva who spoke with journalists at the National Assembly after an interactive session with the leadership of the assembly, on Monday, said that the new bill sought to commercialise rather than scrap the corporation.
He explained: “We have heard so much noise about NNPC being scrapped but that is not being envisaged by the bill at all.
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“NNPC will not be scrapped but commercialised in line with deregulation move being made across all the streams in the sector comprising of upstream, downstream and midstream.
“We have said that NNPC will be commercialised.
“But if you are talking about transforming the industry, the only new thing that we are introducing is the development of the midstream, that is the pipeline sector.
“So we have provided robustly for the growth of the midstream sector.
“Through commercialisation, the required competitiveness in the sector, will be achieved.”
