PIB: Nigeria Loses $15b Yearly From Investors—PENGASSAN

By Dipo Olowookere

Nigeria has so far lost about $200 billion of investments due to its inability to legislate the proposed reform in oil and gas, the Petroleum and Natural Gas Senior Staff Association of Nigeria (PENGASSAN) has disclosed.

The association made this submission in a paper sent to the Senate Joint Committee in the Petroleum Industry Governance Bill in Abuja.

PENGASSAN also said Nigeria loses $15 billion annually in investments withheld or diverted by investors.

It further noted that from 2010 to 2015, the country has also lost about $100 billion from potential earnings all because the government has failed to pass the PIB into law since 2009.

According to the union, these figures were arrived at as a result of investigations made by its seven-man committee headed by Mr Chika Onuegbu.

In the paper released on Wednesday in Lagos, PENGASSAN said it looks forward to the passage of the entire bill because it dealt with important aspects of the petroleum industry reform in Nigeria.

“PENGASSAN’s position on the oil and gas reform remained the same whether the bill remains as a single document or broken into parts since the Minister of State for Petroleum has said that PIB will be divided into six,” it said.