PIB'll be re-introduced -Senate

Indications emerged at theweekend that the Petroleum Industry Bill (PIB) will soon be re-introduced at the upper legislative chamber of the National AssemblyThe bill, which was introduced at the sixth Senate, could not be passed before the end of its tenure but according to the rule, it has to be re-introduced before the debate could continue.The Senate chairman of the Petroleum Resources (upstream) Committee, Mr Emmanuel Paulker, said that the fact that the bill was no more at the National Assembly did not mean it was dead insisting that, 'I'm aware that sooner than later, the bill would be re-introduced.'On the delay in its re-introduction, he disclosed that it was due to the late constitution of the Senate committees saying that 'the committees just came into operation some few weeks back. Take the Upstream Committee as an example. We have just started our interactive sessions with the Petroleum Ministry, the International Oil Companies (IOC's), and other relevant bodies under the committee. They need some time to galvanise on the PIB.'According to him, '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 government and the representatives of some people in the National Assembly. But there was no controversy as far as the bill was concerned.
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