Petroleum Regulatory Governance: An Analysis of Nigeria’s Petroleum Fiscal Regime and Its Strategic Objectives

The continuous rise in global demand for non-renewable source of energy has stimulated the mechanisms by which the petrostates govern their natural resources. Petrostates have been mindful to ensure resource-based investment corresponds with optimal economic recovery through adequate regulatory governance, legislative frameworks and policies. The effectiveness of such ‘good governance’ practices and their implementation requires closer attention and scrutiny. Drawing on a unique empirical analysis of Nigeria’s petroleum industry regulatory governance supported by the research design, this study looked into Africa’s largest petroleum producing nation and systematically investigates the petrostate’s regulatory governance focusing on implementation of its petroleum fiscal regime.

In doing so, a mixed-method (quantitative and qualitative) research design was adopted. The quantitative method collects data via a questionnaire-based survey. Whilst the qualitative method collects data via semi-structured interviews with the aim of having a robust information on the Nigeria’s upstream sector practices. The research applies purposive and snowball sampling techniques. The questionnaire-based surveys collect data from a total sample size of 112 respondents. The semi-structured interviews on the other hand collects data from 14 key oil stakeholders in Nigeria. The obtained data were analysed using a Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) software and NVIVO for the qualitative data.

Guided by literature review, game and stakeholder theories were adopted as the theoretical framework for the study, which underscored the focus of the study using the researcher’s terminologies in answering the research questions.

Findings from the empirical data identifies a number of key issues relating to the practices in the Nigeria’s petroleum industry, which include.

- confusion around practices (goals, roles and responsibilities) amongst and within regulatory agencies.
- corrupt practices among the regulators within the petroleum value chain.
- lack of full autonomy from the regulatory agency
- lack of good reporting and disclosure
- obsolete existing petroleum legislations

However, this research offers a specific contribution to empirical findings using primary data collection.