Nigeria approves new oil policy

Nigeria’s federal government approved a new oil policy Wednesday which it said was designed to decrease imports of refined products and promote stability in the industry.

The new policy also outlines the reorganisation of the Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation to ensure efficiency and accountability as well as a shift towards selling to new markets.
 
“Apart from the fact of fluidity in pricing and uncertainty in terms of the price regime in crude, we are pushing for a refining processing environment and moving away from exporting as it were to refining petroleum product[s], that’s one change you will see,” Minister of State for Petroleum Emmanuel Ibe Kachikwu told journalists.

“Secondly how we sell our crude is going to be looked at, there is a lot of geographical market we need to look at in the long term, contracting  and sales as opposed to systemic contracting that we have been doing.”

The country’s previous oil policy was implemented in 2007. Earlier this month, the Cabinet published the new national gas policy.