ABUJA (AFP) -- Nigeria's President Umaru Yar'Adua called on oil companies to do more to help local people ahead of drawing up a bill to reform the country's oil industry.

""I urge you to further commit to working diligently to ensure that the oil and gas industry is directed towards meeting both the aspirations of Nigerians and the legitimate business goals of all our partners,"" he said Monday.
""The enormous potential of oil and gas for generating economic growth, transfer of technology and providing a strong foundation for the transformation of our industrial and agricultural sectors has never really been fully exploited,"" he added.
Yar'Adua was speaking at the opening of a conference on the oil and gas industry in Abuja.
He also spoke of the need to create a better governance framework in the oil sector.
""This effort will result in the drafting of a Petroleum Industry Bill, which I will place before the National Assembly within the next few months,"" he said.
Earlier in his speech, Yar'Adua lamented the fact that the country's economy was not benefiting enough from its rich natural resources.
""It stands to reason that this situation cannot and should not be allowed to continue any longer,"" he added.
""Our story is that of a country with legendary gas reserves that remains afflicted with an abysmal electric power situation that at the end of the day has stunted our economic growth.""
The president's comments came a week after he introduced a series of measures to force businesses to reserve a proportion of their domestic gas production for the Nigerian market, or suffer penalties.
Nigeria is the world's ninth largest producer of gas, with a third of continent's total reserves, but it is one of the smallest consumers of liquefied gas. A country of 140 million people uses just 70,000 tons a year.
It is a similar story in the oil sector, with thousands of tons being imported daily when the country is in fact the largest producer of oil in the whole of Africa.
Yar'Adua is far from being the only Nigerian to express reservations about the practices of the foreign oil and gas companies in the country.
Activists in the southern Delta region of Nigeria have long called for of the nation's oil wealth to be invested in the local communities.
Since the beginning of 2006, attacks by militants in the region have cut by 25 percent oil production in Nigeria, Africa's biggest crude producer and eighth largest world exporter.