Nigeria has postponed its long-awaited Petroleum Industry Bill (PIB) due to the COVID-19 pandemic but will pass it before the end of the year, the head of state oil company NNPC said on Wednesday.

The NNPC boss who was speaking at the NAPE Webinar on the Topic: ‘The Impact of COVID-19 on the Nigerian Oil & Gas Industry – The Way Forward’, noted that lockdowns across Nigeria had pushed back the timetable of passing the bill even as the government was aiming to pass the sprawling legislation overhaul by the end of July.

“We have lost time because of COVID-19,” he said. “But I know within this year we will be able to deliver on this.”

In the works for nearly two decades, the bill governs everything from oilfield licensing rounds to the share of oil wealth that stays in the Niger Delta region which produces most of Nigeria’s crude.

Companies have said they cannot invest significantly in Nigeria until the bill has passed citing regulatory uncertainty as a hurdle along with low oil prices and an increase in government’s take of deepwater oil revenue passed last year.

Reuters reports that Kyari also said the government was close to announcing a deal to build a 200,000 barrel per day (bpd) condensate splitter and that it would partner with private companies for the money and the expertise to fix its own ailing oil refineries and pipelines.

He acknowledged that previous efforts to fix the refineries, which were totally shut down in April, were “bungled”, but said he was confident Nigeria could soon produce all the fuel it consumes.