Three percent allocation in PIB is unfair to host communities—- IPMAN

Mr Joseph Obele, Chairman, Rivers State Chapter of the Independent Petroleum Marketers Association of Nigeria (IPMAN), has expressed his dissatisfaction over the three per cent oil derivation approved by the senate for oil producing communities.

Obele, in a statement made available to newsmen on Thursday in Port Harcourt, said that the long awaited Petroleum Industry Bill (PIB) was not worth celebrating in the Niger Delta region.

“The breaking news that the Senate has finally passed into law the long awaited PIB is a good news for the oil and gas sector and a bad news for the people of the Niger Delta region.

“The reason is that we in Niger Delta are the direct oil producing people and the initial 10 per cent proposed by the initiators of the bill was not too big for the host region.

“Today, the PIB has been passed into law leaving the host communities with only  three per cent derivation.

“This is indeed unfair to us and is not a good news and we are not greeting this move with open arms.

“If the initiators of the bill asked for 10 per cent derivation, I think it’s not bad at all, we own the oil and we are saying 10 per cent should be assigned to the host communities,” Obele said in the statement.

The IPMAN boss, however, said that to the oil and gas sector, the new law would henceforth dismantle the operational bottleneck bureaucracy and the monopoly of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) that had long hindered investment in that sector.

The PIB will invariably usher in new investors and is also set to create a large volume of employment opportunities.

“On that note, I give kudos to the Senate.

“A lot of foreign investors have been waiting for the passage of this bill…the new law has further broadened the investment opportunities in the sector,” he said.