Expert Faults NASS On PIB …Wants Rejig Of Domestic Supply Clause, Others

An Associate Professor of Energy and Environmental Law in the Rivers State University, Dr. Samuel Chisa Dike, has picked holes in the recommendations made by the Senate and the House of Representatives, as a prelude to the passage of the Petroleum Industry Bill (PIB), saying, some of the recommendations do not meet the yearnings and aspirations of the people of the Niger Delta in particular and Nigerians in general.
Dike, who made his position known in an exclusive interview with The Tide in Port Harcourt, said the domestic supply obligation clause, contained in the bill which expects the International Oil Companies (IOCs) to supply crude oil to the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), as a public limited company is faulty because, according to him, NNPC as a public limited company, out to make profit, would hardly supply petroleum products to Nigerians as envisaged, if arrogated that primary responsibility.
Consequent upon this, the university teacher appealed to the Nationl Assembly to rejig and amend that clause before its joint session, to reflect the emerging realities in other developed countries.
“In other developed countries, the domestic supply obligation clause is intended to make sure that there is energy security, security of supply of all petroleum products including crude oil to the people, not to a company. This clause should be rejigged and amended before the joint session,” he pleaded.
Dike, who is also the National President of the Association of Environmental Lawyers of Nigeria (AELN) equally indicated that it is wrong to direct NNPC, as contained in the bill to spend 30 percent of its profits to fund frontier basins, stressing that it is an aberration in that NNPC, going by the recommendations in the bill is a public limited company.
According to him, the government cannot dictate to a limited company how it should manage its profits. He also queried the rationale for directing the company to spend its profits in developing the frontier basins in Chad and up North, new areas where oil is likely to be found, whereas the basins in the South of the country are already mature and developed.
“That means that NNPC is going to spend 30 percent of its income to develop those areas whether there is oil or not. This is not the proper way to deploy the profits of a public limited company,” he said.
Dike further noted that the three percent earmarked for host communities in the bill is grossly inadequate, saying, the provision blatantly negates the gains made by the amnesty programme, and therefore, retrogressive, and called on President Muhammadu Buhari not to assent to the Bill if it is passed by the National Assembly without amending the offensive clauses.
The senior lecturer, however, commended the National Assembly for making efforts to pass the bill and for breaking what he described as a jinx, contending that the important clauses the NASS has injected into the bill are nebulous and unclear.

By: Donatus Ebi