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Senator Gershom Bassey
The Chairman, Cross River Caucus in the National Assembly, Senator Gershom Bassey representing Cross River South Senatorial District spoke to journalists in Calabar, capital of Cross River State on the recent Petroleum Industry Bill (PIB) and its benefits. Excerpts:
By Akpan David, Calabar
Can you enlighten the public on the Petroleum Industry Bill (PIB).
The PIB is a living document. I give kudos to the National Assembly for achieving the feat after about 20 years of trial. The bill is not perfect, but as we go along, it will be fine-tuned. I give kudos to the country, the Senate, House of Representatives for passing a PIB which will ensure investments in Nigeria. This bill will continue to be perfected as it is used.
Many northern states that have oil pipelines passing through their states will subsequently get benefits as oil bearing states. What is your reaction?
On the pipeline issue, one of the key elements in looking at the bill was the issue of security of pipelines and pipeline vandalization. The thinking was that if host communities and places where pipelines pass through have an interest in the security of that pipeline, then they will ensure that those pipelines are secured and of course the security of pipelines goes to the revenues that come into our country, so that was the reason why the host communities were defined the way they were defined. So, I think it makes a bit of sense because it is important that pipelines are preserved and not vandalized. It’s possible to have better ways of protecting the pipelines and that is why I say it is a living document. New ideas may come in future.
Senate has given three percent to oil bearing communities, is this okay considering the environmental impact they suffer?
For me, I think five percent is what we all requested. You heard the Deputy Senate President on the floor, in fact he said five percent and a little bit more. So, we hope that when they go to conference that we will go with the House of Representatives recommendation of five percent.
The Pan Niger Delta Forum (PANDEF) has called for a reversal of the PIB bill as passed by the Senate to reflect 10 percent for oil bearing communities and the 30 per frontier production fund.
I can’t really comment on PANDEF’s request because I haven’t read it. But if you are asking me to comment on host community benefit, I have already told you I think they should increase the amount going to host communities because it’s only fair. Despite all the arguments on investments and so on, I think that investments can still carry five percent as passed by the House of Representatives at least. On the frontier exploration, what we managed to achieve in the bill was to define frontier to cover the entire country and not just certain parts of the country. So, for me in Calabar, frontier covers the Calabar basin and we need to have in Cross River State exploration going on in our state. So far, as frontier funding is applied evenly across the country in all the basins, Dahomey basin, the Cross River basin, Chad basin and so on. We can have a level of fairness and equity in frontier exploration.
Do you think this PIB as passed is a fair deal for the south?
It could be better; the PIB as passed encourages more inflows into the country through the oil and gas sector. These types of inflows in exploration and production are things that will benefit us in the south because for the past fifteen years, there has been minimal investment in the oil and gas industry. There has only been one bid round and the bid round was not very successful, and we have had bid rounds in the marginal fields, which has not been realizable and these are all directly attributable to an unpredictable oil and gas environment. What the PIB does is to bring predictability to the oil and gas environment and with predictability comes investments.
Are we looking to have more investments?
In some countries, just by signing off on bill, you see huge amounts of $100billion, $200billion worth of investments coming in to that country just by signing off on a PIB bill. I am sure we can have huge investments in the country as a result of the predictability we have brought to the oil and gas industry.
