Nigeria’s upper legislative body, the Senate, has moved consideration of the Petroleum Industry Governance Bill (PIGB) to before June 8, to coincide with the second anniversary of the Eight Senate, contrary to May 16 and 17 earlier proposed.
“Our next major assignment (after passing the budget) is to pass the Petroleum Industry Governance Bill and immediately fast-track the process of passage of the Host Community Bill and the Fiscal Regime Bills which are also related to the reforms of the petroleum sector”, Sabi Abdullahi, spokes person for Senate, said in a statement on Monday.
April 25 as date of passage of the bill was not feasible, owing to the death of Isiaka Adeleke, a senator representing Osun West.
The bill was first introduced as the Petroleum Industry Bill (PIB) in the Sixth National Assembly in 2008 as an executive bill by late president, Umaru YarAdua.
It was not passed and was re-introduced into the Seventh National Assembly in 2012 by former President Goodluck Jonathan. Although the Seventh House of Representatives passed it towards the end of its tenure, it failed to get a concurrent passage from the Senate, thus ending the life of the bill.
Unlike the two unsuccessful attempts, the current proposal in the Eighth Senate, is a private member bill sponsored by the Chairman, of the Senate Committee on Petroleum Upstream, Tayo Alasoadura.
The lawmakers also warned Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, Ibe Kachikwu, to stop making false claims on the on-going process of passing into law, the Petroleum Industry Bill (PIB).
“It is funny to read a report that the Minister went to far away Houston, to say that there was a disagreement between the Senate and House of Representatives, over the PIB, which has delayed its passage and that he has been speaking with the House to take the version of the bill being worked on by the Senate,” said Abdullahi.
“The statement was unfortunate because the Minister was only demonstrating lack of knowledge of how a bicameral legislature functions.
“First, one would have expected that such a critical bill aimed at reforming the oil sector, which is the mainstay of the national economy, would be a priority of the Minister when he combined the post with that of being Managing Director of the NNPC. The current National Assembly started work on the bill when it waited for so many months without anything coming from the executive branch.
“Again, it is not unusual for there to be differences in the contents of a bill on the same issue being worked on by the two chambers of the National Assembly. There is already an inbuilt legislative process for reconciling the two versions of a bill, through what is called harmonisation process, by the Conference Committee of both chambers. So, there is no need for a minister to dabble into the process.
“Kachikwu is just jumping into the issue at this point because he knew we will in the next few weeks, pass the PIB and we think the remarks he made on the issue were an unnecessary diversion aimed at creating needless controversy.”
The Senate spokesperson further advised the Petroleum Minister to refrain from making statements which may give wrong impressions to the international community that the legislature and the executive are not on the same page on critical issues affecting the national economy.
“Passage of the PIGB provides an opportunity for the lawmakers to show they are patriotic,” said Emeka Okwuosa, Chairman and CEO of Oilserv Limited.
Okwuosa further said, “So far as we have not passed the PIB, there will still be deferred investment and Nigeria will continue to lose value because some of the tax regimes, especially for offshore production is no more representative.”
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 the NPRC, which also acts as the sector regulator.
It also seeks to create two entities, the Nigerian Petroleum Assets Management Company (NPAMC) and the National Petroleum Company (NPC) in the place of the NNPC, to be vested with certain liabilities and assets of the NNPC.
The NPAMC will manage NNPC’s oil and gas investment in assets where government is not obligated to provide any upfront funding (basically 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.
OLUSOLA BELLO, OWEDE AGBAJILEKE & ISAAC ANYAOGU
