Almost two years after it underwent public hearing at the House of Representatives, and barely a year after he signed the local content Act into law, President Goodluck Jonathan has assured that after all the years of delay, the Petroleum Industry bill (PIB) will be passed into law before the expiration of the present administration’s tenure.
Almost two years after it underwent public hearing at the House of Representatives, and barely a year after he signed the local content Act into law, President Goodluck Jonathan has assured that after all the years of delay, the Petroleum Industry bill (PIB) will be passed into law before the expiration of the present administration’s tenure.
President Jonathan also assured that when passed into law the bill will create a level playing ground for all stakeholders even as he assured that it will accommodate the interests of all stakeholders and create transparency by providing a stable competitive framework for the industry.
Giving this assurance last week at the opening ceremony of Nigeria’s biggest industry annual exhibition; the Nigerian Oil and Gas conference, NOG 2011 in Abuja, the president who was represented by his special adviser on petroleum matters Dr. Emmanuel Egbogah in his keynote address said that “we are assured in the next couple of weeks, well before the end of this administration, the PIB will be passed into law”
Shipping Position Weekly gathered that the PIB is based on the report of the Oil and Gas Reform Implementation Committee, OGIC, set up by the federal government in year 2000 to carry out a comprehensive reform of the oil industry.
President Jonathan has however assured that the terms of the bill would make the deep offshore acreage, where most of its future production potential lies, attractive to investors.
“The terms for the deep offshore and other places are very, very competitive, and we have assured that our government take will not exceed 65 per cent. It is much better than our closest competitor Angola and many other jurisdictions,” he said.
President Jonathan, said the major thrust of his economic policy was to achieve a greater linkage between the oil and gas industry, which contributed over 90 percent of the national revenue, but only about 30 percent of the Gross Domestic Product, GDP, with other sectors of the economy, particularly power, to fast-track the national vision of Nigeria becoming one of the 20, biggest economies by Year 2020, under the Vision 20: 2020.
According to him, Vision 20:2020 requires government to utilize oil and gas revenues in a more sustainable manner and also use oil revenues to develop other sectors of the economy.”
He said this is why his administration had put in place the enabling environment to attract private investments in the power sector and other major downstream infrastructures, adding that such investments “requires effective collaboration between the public and private sectors.”
Minister for Petroleum Resources, Mrs. Diezani Alison-Madueke who was also at the exhibition assured that with the passage of the bill, oil producing communities will begin to receive over $600 million as annual dividends
According to the minister who was represented at the event by the Group Executive Director, Exploration and Production, Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, NNPC, Mr. Andrew Yakubu, an essential part of the reform was to ensure that the members of all oil producing communities become shareholders of the resources.
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