OpeOluwani Akintayo
Lagos — The revised Petroleum Industry Bill, PIB, has been passed to the National Assembly by the Presidency after months of setback by the coronavirus pandemic.
SweetcrudeReports gathered that the new version of the bill, which had been approved by President Muhammadu Buhari and the Federal Executive Council, FEC, has been represented to the Senate by a team of lawyers at the Ministry of Justice.
After over a decade of trying to pass it into law, the Nigerian legislature in January, began consultation with the president to draft the bill “from scratch”.
The bill was supposed to have been presented to the Senate in February, according to Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, Timipre Sylva.
The revised edition combines 16 different Nigerian petroleum laws into a single-volume document. The first version of the bill was presented to the National Assembly in 2007.
Senate president, Sen. Ahmed Ibrahim Lawan, had expressed confidence on Twitter that the bill would be passed by both chambers of the National Assembly and sent to the president to sign it into law before the end of the year.
“We believe that this time around, the ninth National Assembly will break the jinx and should be able to pass the Petroleum Industry Bill,” he said in February.
The PIB when finally passed into law, will overhaul Nigeria’s petroleum sector with regards to taxation and other affairs.
