TUC Wants Nigerians To Study PIB

Nigerians have been to study the draft copy of the Petroleum Industry Bill (PIB) in order to make constructive input before the bill becomes law.

Speaking in an interview with The Tide,  the Chairman of Rivers Council, Trade Union Congress (TUC) Comrade Chika Onuegbu, said there are clauses in the bill that are good for the industry and others that could be injurious to Nigerian players in the industry.

Comrade Onuegbu said that there was need for stakeholders to take time and study the bill to ensure the final petroleum industry law actually reflects the wishes of Nigerians and serve our best interest.

He disclosed that copies of the draft bill could be gotten at the TUC website, www.tucrwers.org.

On whether a state of emergency should be declared on all the nation’s refineries, he expressed concern over the suggestion, describing it as diversionary and waste of resources.

“But my worry is that all the issues, areas and sectors we declared state of emergency in Nigeria, there has been no result. So, I see the idea of declaring state of emergency in a particular sector as diversionary and waste of resources”, he lamented.

He added that a state of emergency had already been declared on the nation’s refineries with the setting up of a committee to work on refineries by the Minister of Petroleum, Mrs Diezani Alison-Madueke.

He reasoned that the committee was supposed to interface with the PIB Committee so that their recommendation could be adopted in the PIB as one of its objectives is to deregulate and liberalise the downstream petroleum sector.

On maintenance of the refineries, he said the last time Port Harcourt Refinery had a turn-around maintenance was in 2000, precisely 12 years ago while the power plants have not been overhauled for about 20 years.

Aside focusing on the recommendations of the  refineries committee and ensuring they are captured in the draft PIB, the Rivers Council TUC boss suggested that a robust framework should be put in place to ensure that five years from now, Nigeria should not be importing petroleum products.

He said the framework which should encourage private investment into the refining sector should include encouraging state governments to own refineries; there should be crude guarantees so that they do not just build refineries without functioning.

He explained that refining is a manufacturing business and therefore should be given incentives like a 10-year tax holiday among others.

According to him, when these investments begin to yield result, there would be employment, savings and the pressure on our foreign reserve would be drastically reduced.

Vivian-Peace Nwinaene