The national assembly has sent the bill seeking to amend the deep offshore and inland basin production sharing contract (DOIBPSC) act to President Muhammadu Buhari for assent, TheCable can report.
TheCable understands the legislative chamber forwarded the amendment bill to the president on Wednesday morning, less than 24 hours after they passed it.
On Tuesday, the house of representatives passed the bill which seeks to amend the act by reviewing the sharing formula to accrue more benefits for the federal government.
The lower legislative chamber then concurred with the senate on the various provisions of the bill as the latter had already passed it.
WHAT NIGERIA STANDS TO GAIN FROM THE AMENDMENT
Nigeria is projected to earn an additional income of $1.4 billion annually from international oil companies operating in the country if the bill seeking to amend a particular section of the act is passed into law.
Section 16 of the act states: “(1) The provisions of this Act shall be subject to review to ensure that if the price of crude oil at any time exceeds $20 per barrel, real terms, the share of the government of the Federation in the additional revenue shall be adjusted under the production sharing contracts to such extent that the production sharing contracts shall be economically beneficial to the government of the Federation.”
Although various stakeholders have been calling for a review of the act, there are fears that it might scare away investors from the oil sector.
During the debate on the bill in the house, Isiaka Ibrahim from Ogun state expressed reservations over the review which he warned could have negative implications.
He said: “It is far expensive to explore offshore today, unlike before where it was only Nigeria that has oil in abundant, we have other countries we are competing with.
“I don’t know if we are taking into consideration if these companies will not leave Nigeria if we can measure the longterm effect of the review.”
The president himself had also shown interest in the review. He forwarded the bill to the current assembly on October 15 after the previous assembly failed to pass it.
Source: The Cable
