The President of the Senate, Ahmad Lawan on Monday said that the current move by the National Assembly to amend the Production Sharing Contract (PSC) Act was necessary for the country in order to generate more revenues from oil and gas endowments.
The lawmaker made the clarification while declaring open a public hearing on the Deep Offshore and Inland Basin Production Sharing Contract 2004(Amendment) Bill 2019, sponsored by Senator Albert Bassey Akpan.
The public hearing was convened jointly by the Senate committees on Petroleum (Upstream), Gas, Finance and Judiciary.
The bill seeks to amend section 5 of the PSC Act to bring the provisions of that section into conformity with the generality of provisions of the Act and into congruence with the intendment and essence of Production Sharing Contracts.
Senator Lawan promised that the upper legislative chamber would, in the process of deliberating on the proposed amendments to the provisions of the Act, be mindful of the need to maintain a competitive environment for businesses to continue to thrive and ensure that the investments in the hydrocarbon resources industry are profitable.
He expatiated: “We want to attract more investments and therefore it is absolutely necessary that we engage in a process that we produce a win-win situation” for Nigeria and the business concerns in the oil and gas industry.
“Let me assure everyone here that the national assembly is determined to pass this bill and of course that will be a precursor to our determination to pass the Petroleum Industry Bill next year,” Lawan added
This is even as the Senate President explained further that the National Assembly would adopt a different approach to make the passage of the PIB a reality.
He said: “We want to see a situation where the Legislature and the Executive work very closely to have a PIB that will attract investment into the oil and gas sector in Nigeria.
“An investment climate that will be competitive; we know we have other countries who have this product, and therefore we have to be competitive, we have to have an environment where the businesses make profit.
“This is a journey that involves everyone. We want both government – and that includes the legislature and executive on one hand and IOCs (International Oil Companies) to work together to ensure that this environment we are trying to create is an environment that will work for all of us”, the lawmaker added.
The Petroleum Industry Bill was first introduced in 2007 and up till now the bill has not been passed in its entirety.
