Lawmakers from both houses of the national assembly have passed the conference committee report of the Petroleum Industry Governance Bill yesterday, paving way for presidential assent on the two decades old bill.
A conference committee is made up of senior members of the standing committtees of both the Senate and the House of Representatives that originally considered the bill to resolve disagreements on the bill.
“The challenge will and has always been on the need to get consensus on an issue as important as this one. However, today’s passage of this Conference Committee Report on the PIGB will also lay the foundation for the other Bills that are coming,” says Bukola Saraki, senate president after the passage.
Saraki further said, “We have once again shown investors both within and outside the country that this National Assembly is very responsible in the areas that have to do with the laws that govern our petroluem sector.I am sure that we will hopefully get the assent of Mr President and open a new page in Nigeria’s petroleum industry.”
BusinessDay earlier reported that the PIGB will be harmonised and presented for presidential assent before the end of March based on the views expressed Omotayo Alasoadura, chairman of the senate committee on upstream at an energy conference in Lagos recently.
Presidential assent looks possible as a source close to the technical committee reviewing the bill on behalf of government had earlier confirmed to BusinessDay that the president will not withhold assent on the bill when it reaches him later this month.
A key highlight of the bill is that it prohibits the exercise of discretion in the award of oil acreages by the petroleum minister and the president and subsumes the functions of the Department of Petroleum Resources (DPR), and the Petroleum Products Pricing Regulatory Agency (PPPRA), into NPRC which also acts as the sector regulator.
The PIGB splits the NNPC into three entities: the Nigerian Petroleum Assets Management Company (NPAMC) and the National Petroleum Company (NPC), which will be vested with certain liabilities and assets of the NNPC. There is also the regulator, the Nigerian Petroleum Regulatory Commission (NRPC).
The NPAMC shall be responsible for the management of the NNPC’s oil and gas investment in assets where government is not obligated to provide any upfront funding (essentially the production sharing contracts), whilst the NPC shall be an integrated oil and gas company operating as a fully commercial entity across the energy value chain.
Analysts say assent on the bill is needed to tackle NNPC’s poor remitances which currently has the Federation Accounts Allocation Committee meeting ending in deadlock since state commissioners of finance disagree with NNPC revenue claim.
The FAAC found discrepancies in NNPC payment into the federation account. Consequently, the committee said it could not approve the allocations to the three tiers of government, which means workers in state governments may be owed further.
The Accountant-General of the Federation, Ahmed Idris, confirmed the development to reporters shortly after the meeting at the headquarters of the Federal Ministry of Finance, Abuja.
After being stuck in the national assembly for a decade, the senate broke down the bill into four sections and introduced it as a private member bill.
Other aspects yet to be passed deals with the fiscal and licensing regime for oil and gas players, and host community fund, which are going to be addressed in subsequent legislations
