Alison-Madueke
ABUJA/LAGOS (Reuters) - A new
draft of Nigeria's long delayed oil bill, whose passage is needed to unblock
billions of dollars of stalled investment into exploration and production, will
be finalized this week, sources close to the matter said on Thursday.
A copy of the 200-page Petroleum
Industry Bill (PIB) obtained by Reuters includes plans to partly privatize and
list the state oil firm, tax oil company profits at 20 percent for deep offshore
and 50 percent for shallow or onshore, and give the oil minister supervisory
powers over all institutions in the industry.
Current oil firm profit taxes are
not published. A spokesman for Nigeria's leading operator Shell said he did not
know what current tax rates were.
The PIB has been years in the
making and the delays have caused uncertainty over the future framework of
working in Nigeria, costing the industry billions of dollars of potential
investment and the government much-needed revenues.
Without it, most analysts expect
oil production in Nigeria to decline substantially over the next few years.
Nigeria exports more than 2
million barrels a day (bpd) of crude oil popular with U.S. buyers because it is
light and easy to refine. China and India are also growing takers of Nigerian
crude.
Even when this version gets to
parliament, there is no guarantee lawmakers will push it through, as powerful
vested interests could block or delay it, as has happened in the past.
President Goodluck Jonathan is
explicitly behind this version, and it was drawn up by a taskforce of senators
his administration appointed, but even though his party has a majority in both
houses of parliament it could still stall.
The bill as drafted would also
roll Nigeria's various regulatory bodies for upstream and downstream into one,
and give Oil Minister Diezani Alison-Madueke power to pick who runs it.
Placing all institutions concerned
with oil under her supervision may upset those who hoped the bill would curb her
already substantial powers. Previously the downstream regulator was independent
of the ministry.
Alison-Madueke signed a 20-year
oil license in February with U.S. oil giant Exxon on one of Nigeria's largest
oil assets, which produces over 500,000 barrels per day, but the terms were kept
private.
This license renewal comes despite
the minister saying for years that the delay to the PIB was holding contracts
like these up. Alison-Madueke said this week that similar renewals with Shell
and Chevron would be signed by June.
It is not clear whether those
licenses include exemptions from any change of terms brought about by the new
PIB.
(Reporting by Joe Brock and Tim
Cocks, editing by William Hardy)
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