The Petroleum Industry Bill, which has spent 20 years at the National Assembly, will be passed before the of this month, the Senate President, Ahmad Lawan, has assured.
Lawan made the declaration on Monday at the start of the 2021 Nigeria International Petroleum Summit, in Abuja.
He disclosed that a joint committee of the Senate and the House of Representatives is close to rounding off its report writing on the bill.
PIB has passed through various versions since it began its journey to the National Assembly. The delay in its passage has been blamed for the low level of activities in Nigeria’s oil and gas sector, as it’s expected to spell out details of obligations and benefits for all the stakeholders.
Lawan said that the National Assembly had planned to pass the PIB last month, but noted that more needed to be done to capture the concerns of all stakeholders.
“We want to be very fair in listening to everyone but one different approach that has been able to bring us where we are today in the PIB processing is that we decided right from the beginning that the solo effort in 2007/2008 by the then Executive Arm of government by bringing to the National Assembly the PIB, which at the of the day the National Assembly could not pass.”
“In our legislative agenda for 2019-2023 in the 9th Assembly we decided that we must have a better way. Neither the solo effort of the Executive nor the solo effort of the legislature could deliver the PIB, we better have a cooperative approach where the National Assembly will work with the administration to conceive the Bill through very rigorous consultation and at the end of the day we narrowed down our differences and areas of potential conflicts.
“I think we have been able to achieve that significantly. The speed and commitment the National Assembly has shown in working on the PIB and reaching where we are today shows that we have chosen the right path.
“As I speak, our joint committee of both Senate and the House on the PIB are about to conclude writing the report which will be submitted to both chambers of the National Assembly. Our expectation is that we will pass the PIB within this month of June by the grace of God”.
Speaker of the House of Representatives, Femi Gbajabiamila assured oil and gas industry stakeholders that the PIB as presently conceived is not intended to drive anyone out of business.
“We are expected to encourage business whether foreign or local or community-based. But as competing interests juggle and try to elbow each other out, it is the role of the National Assembly to look for a balancing act, bearing in mind that the most important interest for us is that national interest and it is that our national interest that we have that we will look at while considering other competing interests to strike a very delicate balance in this industry,” the Speaker said.
