By Adedapo Adesanya
Nigeria will get the long-awaited oil and gas reform bill aimed at boosting output and attracting foreign investment in the coming days, Reuters reported on Tuesday.
The Petroleum Industry Bill (PIB) has been in the works for 20 years and its need has become more urgent this year as low oil prices and a shift towards renewable energy have made the competition tougher to attract investment from oil majors.
According to the report, fiscal uncertainty has delayed a decision on a multi-billion-dollar expansion by Royal Dutch Shell and its partners, while Chevron, Total and ExxonMobil are selling various Nigerian assets.
The bill was supposed to have been presented to the Senate in February, according to Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, Mr Timipre Sylva, but coronavirus disruptions pulled the plug on it.
The revised edition combines 16 different Nigerian petroleum laws into a single-volume document. The first version of the bill was presented to the National Assembly in 2007.
Reuters, according to its source, noted that the bill will be presented in one piece with four chapters.
Senate President, Mr Ahmed Ibrahim Lawan, had expressed confidence on Twitter that the bill would be passed by both chambers of the National Assembly and sent to the president to sign it into law before the end of the year.
“We believe that this time around, the ninth National Assembly will break the jinx and should be able to pass the Petroleum Industry Bill,” he said in February.
The PIB when finally passed into law, will overhaul Nigeria’s petroleum sector with regards to taxation and other affairs.
It also proposes to boost the amount of money companies pay to local communities and for environmental cleanups.
The bill would also alter the dispute resolution process between companies and the government, though specifics of the changes were not included in the summary.
In addition, measures aimed at pushing companies to develop gas discoveries and a framework for gas tariffs and delivery for use in local power generation was also contained in the document.
Responsible for 90 per cent of foreign remunerations, oil has always been Nigeria’s major driver but changes late last year that hiked Nigeria’s take of oil earnings and increases in tax frustrated companies.
An effort to pass reforms by breaking them into several bills in 2018 fell flat; just one portion made it to President Buhari’s desk, and he never signed it.