Nigeria Content Online

Austen Oniwon, the
group managing director of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation,
has reassured the international oil companies operating in Nigeria that
the Petroleum Industry Bill, PIB, currently before the National
Assembly, was not designed to victimise them, but to simplify and
streamline the process of doing business in the Nigerian oil and gas
sector in such a way that all investors would operate on a level
playing field.

Mr. Oniwon made
this clarification during a meeting with the French ambassador to
Nigeria, Jean-Michel Dumond, who paid a courtesy call on him at the
NNPC Towers, Abuja.

He disclosed that
some of the concerns raised by the companies about doing business in
the country have been reflected in the bill, and urged France and other
western countries to invest in the downstream, midstream, and upstream
sub-sectors of the petroleum industry in Nigeria.

He called on the
ambassador to invite Total, the oil giant, to invest in the downstream
sector of the value chain by building refineries in Nigeria. He also
reiterated the federal government’s commitment to the deregulation of
the downstream sector in order to allow market forces to control the
prices of petroleum products.

Responding, Jean-Michel Dumond commended Nigeria for its quest to
promote transparency and accountability through the PIB, and expressed
the readiness of France to sustain its strategic business partnership
with Nigeria, disclosing that France is the second largest investor in
the petroleum sector in Nigeria.