Petroleum Industry Bill Soon To Be Reintroduced In Senate

Senate Chairman of the Committee on Petroleum (Upstream) has stated that the Petroleum Industry Bill (PIB) would soon be reintroduced to the House of Assembly for passage.

Speaking with journalists in Abuja over the weekend, Senator Emmanuel Paulker stated that the bill was not dead and would soon be introduced.

The Senator disclosed, “That PIB is not in the National Assembly does not mean the Bill is dead. It would be re-introduced. As the Chairman of the Petroleum Resources (Upstream) Committee, I’m aware that no sooner than later, each committee would work with similar committees and NNPC to see that this Bill is re-introduced.

‘’Nobody can hijack PIB. I was a close participant in the processes under which the PIB passed through to the Senate. No group can hijack that bill. You know that when a bill gets to the second reading stage, it’s open for debate. It would pass through scrutiny. It would even go to public hearing where Nigerians would make input.

‘’So, no group can hijack that type of bill. I see no possibility of any group hijacking that bill; definitely not PIB. Look, PIB is critical to the economy of this country, very critical at this stage and everybody has shown interest and maybe that is the more reason, owing to the vast interest shown by legislators, people took their time in addressing all the issues that arose from that bill.

”There were some contentious areas, even among ourselves, during the consideration of the bill.

‘’I have explained that the PIB borders on fiscal regime. If you are reviewing a law that borders on taxes for the past 10 years, there’s the tendency that taxes would be increased and if you are the person paying, nothing stops you from saying that what you are proposing is just too high for me to pay. That’s normal.”

Responding to journalists on the controversial nature of the proposed legislation, the Senator responded, “‘’I don’t think I would agree that the Bill is controversial. There are differences in stakeholders’ thinking on the PIB, especially with the fiscal regime which borders on money. If one party is saying you should take more money, the other party may say that the amount of money you are talking about is too much for me. That doesn’t make it controversial.

“You could see it when we were doing the Third Reading in the last Senate, when we were doing the clause by clause consideration, there was no controversy whatsoever. You could say that maybe there were some areas of disagreements between the IOC’s and maybe government and some representatives of some people in the National Assembly. But there was no controversy as far as the bill was concerned.”