The new Petroleum Industry Bill is going to make the Petroleum Minister more powerful than she already is if it passes through the National Assembly as submitted by President Jonathan.
Mrs Diezani Alison-Madueke will become chairman of the boards of plum parastatals in the ministry and also have powers to scrap the Petroleum Equlisation Fund which ensures the uniformity of petrol prices all over the country, according to contents of the bill, a copy of which was seen by Daily Trust in Abuja yesterday.

Boards of agencies and parastatals are generally chaired by persons other than the minister of the supervising ministry.

But if lawmakers pass the PIB provisions as they are, Mrs Alison-Madueke will become chairman of the boards of the Petroleum Technology Development Fund (PTDF), National Petroleum Assets Management Corporation and Petroleum Equalisation Fund.

Apart from chairing the boards of these agencies, the minister will be responsbile for recommending to the President who to appoint as chief executives and as members of the boards.

She will also be directly supervising the activities of the Petroleum Technical Bureau and the Upstream Petroleum Inspectorate, and also recommend its officials for appointment.

The minister will have powers to decide when to scrap the equalisation fund, which provides “bridging” monies to petrol marketers to cover losses they incur in transporting fuel products up North, so as to achieve uniformity of prices.

“Where the government decides that petroleum product markets have been effectively deregulated, the minister shall take the required actions to ensure that the Equilisation Fund ceases to exist and its assets and liabilities transferred to the government to be controlled and managed by the ministry and at such time the provisions of the sections of this act relating to the equilisation fund shall stand repealed,” the bill said in section 100 (4)

Experts say the minister’s already excessive powers are causing setback in the industry.

In May, the House of Representatives recommended to President Jonathan to split the office of the Petroleum Minister into two so as to share out the workload and whittle the overbearing powers concentrated in the hands of one person. The House made the recommendation after uncovering a N1 trillion oil subsidy fraud for which agencies under Mrs Alison-Madueke’s watch were indicted.

Yesterday, Mrs Alison-Madueke said the new PIB takes care of concerns of the international oil companies in a way that will engender a win-win situation for Nigeria as well as stakeholders in the industry.

She spoke when she received a delegation of the US government led by Mr. Michael Froman, a Deputy Assistant to the US President and Deputy National Security Adviser for International Economic Affairs.

Daily Trust