Oil & Gas: NMDPRA moves to unify safety, environment regulations to ease compliance

 By Obas Esiedesa, Abuja

In a bid to enhance the ease of doing business in Nigeria’s midstream and downstream petroleum sectors, the Nigerian Midstream and Downstream Petroleum Regulatory Authority (NMDPRA) has commenced the process of merging three separate regulations on safety and environment into a single framework.

Speaking at the opening of a stakeholders’ consultation forum on the proposed Midstream and Downstream Petroleum Safety and Environmental Regulations 2025, the Authority Chief Executive, Engr. Farouk Ahmed, said the consolidation would simplify compliance and reduce regulatory complexities.

Represented by the Executive Director, Distribution Systems, Storage and Retailing Infrastructure, and Chairman, Technical Team on Stakeholders’ Engagement, Mr. Ogbugo Ukoha, Ahmed explained: “The consolidation process has enabled the Authority to reduce the complexities of navigating and implementing our numerous regulations; streamline all activities concerning health, safety, and environmental operations, including decommissioning and abandonment, in the midstream and downstream petroleum industry; eliminate inconsistencies and repetitions across multiple regulations; and foster greater compliance with the PIA and related regulations.”

Providing further details, the NMDPRA Secretary and Legal Adviser, Dr. Joseph Tolorunse, said the single regulation would make enforcement and administration more efficient.

“In 2023, we made three regulations that bordered on safety and environment in the mainstream and downstream petroleum sectors. So, the regulations are safety regulations, abandonment and decommissioning regulations and environmental regulations. We decided to consolidate these three regulations into one, called the mainstream and downstream safety and environmental regulations.

“The reason why we decided to consolidate is mainly because we want to have one single regulation. So that it will be easy to refer to and it will also be easy for doing business. It is also an opportunity for us to amend some parts of those regulations we did in 2023”.

He stated that as business enablers, the consolidation is part of efforts to encourage investment into the midstream and downstream sectors.

“It is also to tell you that we are trying to move into an era of self-regulation. Where  you only have to just monitor the activities of the players while the industry self-regulates itself. We hope we will get to that point. As long as we are transparent and in all our dealings, we are also faithful to say the industry should move to self regulations”.

He noted that while there were areas of agreement between NMDPRA and the operators on most of the contents of the new regulation, there were also areas such as what happens to filling stations when they are no longer in use.

“Some of them are saying the regulation should not cover filling stations and we are looking at this. But we are also worried that if a filling station is not properly closed down it may contaminate underground water”, he stated.

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