BY HENRY UMORU
ABUJA— CHAIRMAN, Senate Committee on Petroleum (Upstream), Senator Emmanuel Paulker, PDP, Bayelsa Central, has vowed that nobody could stop the passage of the Petroleum Industry Bill, PIB.

According to him, consultations will be held soon with stakeholders on the realisation of the bill.

Speaking with journalists in Abuja, weekend, Paulker, who noted that the bill was not dead, said it will be re-introduced.

He said:  “That PIB is not in the National Assembly does not mean the Bill is dead. It would be re-introduced. As the Chairman of the Petroleum Resources (Upstream) Committee, I’m aware that no sooner than later, each committee would work with similar committees and NNPC to see that this Bill is re-introduced.

‘’Nobody can hijack PIB. I was a close participant in the processes under which the PIB passed through to the Senate. No group can hijack that bill. You know that when a bill gets to the second reading stage, it’s open for debate. It would pass through scrutiny. It would even go to public hearing where Nigerians would make input.

‘’So, no group can hijack that type of bill. I see no possibility of any group hijacking that bill; definitely not PIB. Look, PIB is critical to the economy of this country, very critical at this stage and everybody has shown interest and maybe that is the more reason, owing to the vast interest shown by legislators, people took their time in addressing all the issues that arose from that bill.

”There were some contentious areas, even among ourselves, during the consideration of the bill.

‘’I have explained that the PIB borders on fiscal regime. If you are reviewing a law that borders on taxes for the past 10 years, there’s the tendency that taxes would be increased and if you are the person paying, nothing stops you from saying that what you are proposing is just too high for me to pay. That’s normal.”

Paulker, who  was, however, optimistic that the bill will scale through this time, explained that the delay in re-introducing it had to do with the fact that all stakeholders involved would require enough time to brainstorm and galvanise on  PIB.

He said ‘’the question is how long were the committees constituted in the Senate? The committees just came interoperation some few weeks back. Take the Upstream Committee as an example. We just started our interactive sessions with the Petroleum Ministry, the International Oil Companies (IOC’s), and other relevant bodies under the committee.

“I think it’s not being delayed because the PIB is very important and moreso, the composition of different committees have changed. So, they need some time to galvanize on the PIB.”

On why the bill is so controversial, Senator Paulker, who noted that it was not controversial as perceived, said:   ‘’I don’t think I would agree that the Bill is controversial. There are differences in stakeholders’ thinking on the PIB, especially with the fiscal regime which borders on money. If one party is saying you should take more money, the other party may say that the amount of money you are talking about is too much for me. That doesn’t make it controversial.

“You could see it when we were doing the Third Reading in the last Senate, when we were doing the clause by clause consideration, there was no controversy whatsoever. You could say that maybe there were some areas of disagreements between the IOC’s and maybe government and some representatives of some people in the National Assembly. But there was no controversy as far as the bill was concerned.”

It would be recalled that the original bill was presented in 2008 by the then late President Musa Yar’Adua’s administration, with Alhaji Rilwan Lukman as the petroleum minister, just as the bill is expected to expand Nigeria’s gains from oil wealth, ensure a coherent package for the oil-producing areas as well as regulate the entire activities in the country’s petroleum resources sector, a sector that accounts for over 85 per cent of Nigeria’s gross earnings.