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•Corporation to retain 7% revenue, subject to N’Assembly approval
The House of Representatives is considering a bill to make it illegal for the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation to spend from revenue it generates without appropriation by the National Assembly.
The bill emerged in the House as the Committee on Public Accounts was already investigating the NNPC over alleged extra-budgetary spending, an allegation that the corporation denied.
Chairman of the committee, Oluwole Oke, sponsored the bill, which aims to set a limit to NNPC spending from its revenue.
The ‘Bill for an Act to Amend the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation Act 2004’ specifically proposes that the NNPC retains seven per cent of the revenue as running cost.
$2.6bn AKK pipeline project: Reps query NNPC, contractors, summon BPP
On
…frown at use of Chinese coy over Nigerian firm
…as firm vows to petition Buhari
By Levinus Nwabughiogu
House of Representatives Tuesday queried the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation NNPC over the alleged exclusion of Bablinks Resource Ltd, a Nigerian firm in the construction contract of the 40’’× 318.6km BVS12 Kaduna-Kano section or Segment 2 of the Ajaokuta-Kaduna-Kano.
Acting on a petition by Local Content Advocacy and Management Group, alleging that contractors in the consortium the bid for the project had been changed by the authorities, the House Committee on Local Content which met with some contractors over the matter said it was interested in the implementation of the local contents in the project.
The House Committee on Local Content interrogated some of the parties in the construction contract in Abuja on Tuesday, querying why the Nigerian contractors in the project were swapped for Chinese after the project had been approved by the Federal Executive Council.
House of Representatives has begun investigation of the alleged breach of Nigeria’s laws on local content in the execution of the Federal Government project to construct a gas pipeline from Ajaokuta to Kano.
Undoubtedly, the nation’s oil sector requires regulatory, governance and fiscal legislation that would guide the exploration and exploitation of the nation’s hydrocarbon deposits in a profitable manner. Nume Ekeghe reports that to achieve this, the Minister of State for Petroleum, Timipre Sylva and others, especially host communities, have intensified the clamour for the Petroleum Industry Bill given the benefit it portends for Nigeria
The Petroleum Industry Bill (PIB), which is meant to regulate the entire sphere of the industry has struggled to see the light of day despite its introduction to the National Assembly over 16 years ago.
The clamour for this has persisted due to a number of factors including the agitations by the Niger Delta people for a fair deal in the mining of their mineral endowment often referred to as the Black Gold.