At the two-day event tagged “Stakeholder’s Consultation Forum on Regulations”, held between October 4 and October 6, the Authority Chief Executive (ACE), NMDPRA, Farouk Ahmed, said the outcome of deliberations would help mobilise input of stakeholders on the drafted regulations.
Ahmed said the authority had in August 1, began the review of first set of the midstream and downstream petroleum regulations to bequeath the industry with laws and policies to enable investments in the sector.
The 10 regulations considered included Petroleum (Transportation and Shipment) Regulations; Assignment and Transfer of Licence and Permit Regulations.
It also included Midstream and Downstream Petroleum (Operations) Regulations; Petroleum Pipeline Regulations, Gas Pricing Domestic Demand and Delivery Regulations, and Natural Gas Pipeline Tariff Regulations.
Others were Midstream and Downstream Decommissioning and Abandonment Regulations; Environmental Regulations for Midstream and Downstream Operations, Midstream and Downstream Gas Infrastructure Fund Regulations and Environmental Remediation Funds Regulations.
Farouk, represented by Executive Director, Distribution Systems, Storage and Retailing Infrastructure, NMDPRA, Ogbugo Ukoha, said the Petroleum Industry Act (PIA) provided that before it could finalise a regulation, such regulation must be subjected to public scrutiny and review.
The PIA, he said, also required the authority to publish the regulations in the media for members of the public to have input in the draft regulation.
“We are required to publish these regulations when we finish drafting, whether by website, newspaper or any other means, and after 21 days this has been published to the public, we are required to obtain feedback from the public.
“The feedback could be either by written or a forum where they can also come and let us know if we have gotten it right with what we have proposed in the regulation or make inputs.
“What we are doing today is a continuation of what we did few months ago, it is in compliance to the PIA. Few months ago, we sent out and published 10 drafted regulations, collaborated with stakeholders and got feedback from them at that time.
“Now again, we have brought out two drafted regulations, the first one is on safety, which is very important to the industry. The second one is on measurement of product whether crude or refined product, to pass from one hand to the other.
“You know in a value chain, we have a lot of operators, we have the one that will bring the products, buy, store and transport the products,” he said.
He said as the regulations are changed custody, there has to be measurement to guard against dispute, adding the authority was optimistic that there would be positive outcome at the end of the stakeholders meeting. (NAN)
