Petroleum Ministry has delivered on priority areas – Sylva

Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, Chief Timipre Sylva has said the Ministry of Petroleum Resources under the purview of President Muhammadu Buhari has delivered on priority areas. Sylva, who made this known at a Town Hall meeting with the management and staff of the ministry in Abuja, stressed on how the ministry delivered on all priority project areas assigned to the ministry by President Buhari. He emphasized that among other deliveries it had ensured the commencement of renovation works on the refineries through the NNPC Ltd. The minister said it had also ensured the commencement of the Train Seven Project, driving the gas revolution and the passage of the Petroleum Industry Bill (PIB) coupled with its signing into law the Petroleum Industry Act (PIA). He said that the Nigerian Upstream Petroleum Regulatory Commission and the Midstream/Downstream Regulatory Authority were institutions established on the back of the PIA. “Today, what we are doing is working out additional mandates, and I can assure you that in the next one and half years available to us, we will be able to deliver on additional mandates we have devised for ourselves,” he said. He said the Year 2022 promised to be very eventful because there was going to be a lot of work. Sylva added that it was not a year to embark on new projects, rather the beginning of a winding down period. He said that the main concern this year was to complete all the programmes that had been initiated. The minister, while stating that the PIA implementation has commenced and was fully on course added that it had 12 months to complete its work while the process of implementation would wind down around September 2022. On Auto Gas, he affirmed that the programme had commenced and would be brought into completion in 2022. He added that the rehabilitation of refineries had commenced and some aspects of the rehabilitation would be brought to completion this year. In a remark, Dr Nasir Sani-Gwarzo, the Permanent Secretary of the Ministry, described the Town Hall meeting as a milestone. Sani-Gwarzo also commended the minister for championing the struggles that birthed the PIA after being in the doldrums for 20 years. In an address, the Director, Human Resources Management of the Ministry, Dr Famous Eseduwo, praised the minister for responding brilliantly to the advance issues of oil and gas in Nigeria and the world at large. Eseduwo assured Sylva the ministry’s backing and support to achieve the set goals of the sector.