Senate to debate PIB afresh

The passage of the Petroleum Industry Bill by the Senate may be further delayed following the presence of many versions of the draft legislation and the intention of the upper legislative chamber to start deliberations on it on a clean slate.Meanwhile, the Deputy President of the Senate, Ike Ekweremadu, has recommended the allocation of crude oil to importers to refine and resell to Nigerians as a way out of the fuel subsidy removal debacle.Ekweremadu, who made the suggestion while inaugurating the Senate Committee on Petroleum (Upstream) on Thursday in Abuja, noted that the subsidy debate was overheating the polity.He said In Nigeria, with the quantum of oil we have, we are still talking about oil subsidy and talking about importation of petroleum products. I think it is something we have to search our soul and appeal to those who are responsible for this situation to do us the single favour of stopping this embarrassment.I believe we can do that through the rehabilitation of our refineries, building new refineries, no matter how small they are, and scatter them everywhere; with this, we will be able to overcome the major challenge.He suggested that the large number of importers and exporters should be brought in to begin refining of crude so that that they could sell at a lower price without been subsidised.Ekweremadu said, I am not an expert in oil issues, but talking from the point of view of a lay man, I am just wondering if while we are trying to rehabilitate our refineries and build new ones, whether all these people who claim to be oil importers whether some of them cannot be allocated crude oil to refine wherever and bring back instead of giving them money in the name of oil subsidies.Everybody now claims to be an exporter but if we can have real people in the sector that are allocated some quantities of crude oil, let them refine and send back and sell locally, I am sure we will not be talking about subsidy because it will be unnecessary; it will be less than what we have now but because people are making money from the process, they find it difficult to allow government do the right thing. We want to appeal to those people to give this country a chance so that we can make progress like other countries.He said the Senate would pay attention to ensuring that the Petroleum Industry Bill was passed to further resolve the many problems in the oil sector, adding that the bill was yet to reach the National Assembly.
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