Lawmakers Do Not Have the Petroleum Industry Bill
By Unknown - Saturday, 5 May 2012
The National Assembly has stopped all versions of the Petroleum Industry Bill (PIB) before it.
There is no such bill as Petroleum Industry Bill (PIB) before the lawmakers at both the lower and upper chambers of the legislature, it was learnt.
The former President of the National Union of Petroleum and Natural Gas Workers (NUPENG), now a member of the House Committee on Petroleum Resources (Downstream), Hon. Peter Ohiozojeh Akpatason, told reporters at the ongoing Offshore Technology Conference in Houston, United States that there is no PIB in House of Representatives.
He said: “People say that virtually everything in the oil and gas industry is at standstill, investment in and developments of new and old projects are stalled because of non-passage of the Petroleum Industry Bill (PIB), but actually the issue is not non-passage because there is no bill in the first place. You don’t talk of passage when there is no bill anywhere.”
He said the attempt to pass the PIB by the Sixth Assembly failed because it was over-delayed by the intervention of the industry and political class. He noted that many versions came up such as the one by the inter-agency committee headed by the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), one from the industry, which was actually packaged by the International Oil Companies (IOCs) and the one that originally came from the Oil and Gas Industry Committee (OGIC) that was in the National Assembly. He said at the end of the day, it took so much time and effort to identify which one was the right version before the lawmakers started the process. Besides, pressure from different interest groups kept coming until the end of the Sixth Assembly, which made them unable to pass it.
“We were to start from where the Sixth Assembly stopped, but we have to start it new, which means going it all over again. But despite the willingness to do so, the new government came up with the idea of producing a fresh draft altogether. I don’t know what informed that, but that is the reality on ground at the moment,” he added.
“We hope that will be done as quickly as possible. As it stands, it is left for the executive arm of the government, the Ministry of Petroleum and the NNPC to come up with a new petroleum industry bill. As we speak right now, there is no one at the National Assembly. So, we cannot talk of non-passage, but rather the situation we have is that there is no bill at all but if one comes, we are so willing and determined to debate on it particularly with people like us who have experienced it on both sides (the industry and legislature).
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