Petroleum sector long-awaited roadmap to be unveiled October 27

President Muhammadu Buhari, will unveil a comprehensive petroleum sector roadmap codenamed 7Big Wins on Thursday, October 27 at the Banquet Hall of the State House, Aso Presidential Villa, Abuja.

Nigerians will expect to see how the ministry’s blueprint for dealing with critical issues in the petroleum sector including destruction of oil and gas infrastructure by militants, transparency, inadequate framework to commercialise gas and regulations that have struggled to kept pace with modern realities.

Reforms in the petroleum sector have been encapsulated as 7Big ideas which he said would help drive reforms in the sector.

“The 7 Big Wins are seven major expected outcomes of an ambitious but well thought-out seven short and medium term priorities aimed at growing Nigeria’s oil and gas industry between 2015 and 2019,” stated Idang Alibi, director, ress and public relations, Ministry of Petroleum Resources.

Analysts say the lack of a clear-cut policy blueprint guiding Federal government’s reform of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) and the entire oil and gas industry does not augur well for the sector.

“I think it is one flaw with the current reforms programme, there is no policy document that is guiding this reform. What we see is the Petroleum Minister making declarations about what the government is going to do. Today they are creating new companies, tomorrow they are restructuring them, I have not seen a policy document guiding this reforms,” said Garuba Dauda, Nigerian officer for NGRI.

In response to this situation, the petroleum ministry have engaged the public in a series of Twitter chats unveiling each item on the 7 big ideas and highlighting how the ministry will implement them.

ISAAC ANYAOGU