Nigeria: Lawmakers Pass Petroleum Industry Bill

Nigerian lawmakers on Thursday passed the country’s long-awaited Petroleum Industry Bill (PIB).

This followed approval of recommendations of the report of the Senate Joint Committee on petroleum downstream, petroleum upstream and gas at plenary on Thursday.

According to Vanguard, Chairman of the Senate Joint Committee, who presented the Committee’s report, noted that the bill, when passed into law “will strengthen accountability and transparency of Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) Ltd as a full-fledged CAMA company under statutory and regulatory oversight with better returns to its shareholders and the Nigerian people.”

On the frontier basins, he said the committee’s recommendation recognised the need for the country to explore and develop the country’s frontier basins.

This, he said was to take advantage of the foreseeable threats to the funding of fossil fuel projects across the world due to speedy shift from fossil fuel to other alternative energy sources.

“To this end, the committee recommends funding mechanism of 30 percent of NNPC Ltd profit oil and profit gas as in the production sharing, profit sharing and risk service contracts to fund exploration of frontier basins,” Sabo said.

On host communities’ development, he said to ensure adequate development of the host communities and reduction in the cost of production, the Joint Committee recommended five percent of the actual annual operating expenditure of the preceding financial year in the upstream petroleum operations affecting the host communities for funding of the Host Communities Trust Fund.

According to him, in the past 10 years, the country has only attracted less than five percent of the over 100 billion dollars capital investment inflow into Africa’s oil and gas industry.

He added that all stakeholders were in total support of the passage of the bill as there was no dissenting voice opposing its passage.

He described the bill as laudable and commendable, saying that its passage would bring the long awaited change in the oil and gas industry.

Source:www.energynewsafrica.com