The Senate has passed the Petroleum Industry Governance Bill.
The PIGB is the first part of the Petroleum Industry Bill, which the National Assembly has failed to pass since 2008.
The report on the bill, produced by the Senate joint committee on gas, petroleum (downstream) and petroleum (upstream), was presented on Thursday by Donald Alasoadura, APC-Ondo.
After a clause-by-clause consideration, with few amendments, the Senate approved the bill, moving a step closer to making its ambitious contents law.
Amongst other objectives, the petroleum bill seeks to introduce reforms that would engender transparency, while at the same time making the oil and gas sector more business-oriented and profit-drive.
If eventually passed by the House of Representatives and signed by the president, the bill will restructure some organisations like the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation and the Department of Petroleum Resources, while setting up new ones like the National Oil Company.
The NOC, as proposed in the bill, will be an “integrated oil and gas company operating as a fully commercial entity and will run like a private company”.
The bill, which has spent years in the National Assembly, is to be sent to the House for concurrence before seeking presidential assent.
“I congratulate the 8th Senate with the passage of this landmark bill which has not been passed for many years,” the senate president Bukola Saraki, said Thursday.