By George Ozalla
The Senate Committee on Downstream Petroleum has yesterday moved to initiate a formal review of the Petroleum Industry Act (PIA) in response to mounting concerns raised by industry stakeholders, community groups and regulatory observers. The decision was taken during a meeting held at the National Assembly in Abuja, where committee members voiced the need to respond to perceived gaps in implementation and oversight.
Committee Chairman Kawu Sumaila (APC–Kano South) told reporters after the session that the review process will be structured to receive and compile all complaints about the PIA’s application, especially those touching on regulatory ambiguity, host-community inclusion and the functioning of the sector’s new governance architecture. He said: “We have resolved to carry out a full refresh of the Act’s operations — to gather the concerns of Nigerians on the PIA and its ancillary institutions, and to ensure that inefficiency, corruption or waste in the law’s administration are exposed and addressed.”
Sumaila indicated that the committee will embark on nationwide consultations, engaging oil-and-gas operators, labour unions, host-community representatives, and civil-society organisations to present firsthand submissions. The aim, he said, is to assemble a coherent dossier of issues which the National Assembly can act on via amendment or oversight measures. He stressed that the review is being undertaken not because the PIA is without merit—it was hailed as a transformational reform—but because its execution must align with the spirit of transparency, equity and accountability envisioned when the law was enacted.
Stakeholders across the petroleum value-chain have voiced complaints since the PIA became law in 2021. Oil marketers and independent operators point to regulatory bottlenecks and rising operational costs, while host-communities and community-rights advocates cite slow progress in the disbursement of benefits, limited inclusion in decision-making and a lack of clarity in regulatory jurisdiction. According to sector analysts, ambiguous wording in the law, overlaps in institutional roles between the newly-established regulatory bodies and older agencies, and unsettled fiscal-framework issues have all contributed to delays and uncertainty.
The committee’s renewed scrutiny comes at a time when the upstream oil-and-gas industry is navigating global energy-transition pressures and declining petroleum revenues, and many observers see the downstream sector’s performance as critical to national energy and economic security. The review signal raises the possibility of amendments to the PIA’s regulatory- and fiscal-framework, the strengthening of oversight mechanisms, and refined governance of host-community development funds.
The Petroleum Industry Act (PIA) 2021 was enacted to create a unified legal, governance, regulatory and fiscal platform for Nigeria’s oil-and-gas sector. It consolidated several existing laws, established two sector-specific regulators—the Nigerian Upstream Petroleum Regulatory Commission (NUPRC) and the Nigerian Midstream and Downstream Petroleum Regulatory Authority (NMDPRA)—and converted the formerly state-run Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPC Ltd) into a commercially-oriented firm. While widely regarded as a landmark move for transparency and reform, the Act has been criticised for leaving key definitions vague, for weak institutional coordination and for protracted rollout of host-community trust funds. The current review marks a significant moment in the law’s lifespan as Nigeria seeks to more fully realise its reform objectives.
