Oil industry budgets $10.726bn for 2010

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Over $10.726 billion has been budgeted by oil companies as expenditure in the fiscal year 2010. This is $3.505 billion higher than last year's budget. This is coming on the heels of the revelation by the Senate committee chairman on petroleum resources (upstream), Lee Maeba, that the joint Senate committee report on the Petroleum Industry Bill (PIB) was ready and could be passed very soon.

Maeba who is the chairman of the joint Senate committee on the PIB made this revelation at a 2010 budget defence session organised by the Senate committee on petroleum resources for the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC). "Our committee report on the PIB is ready. In the next two weeks, it will be submitted to the plenary," Maeba assured oil and gas industry chieftains who were present at the session. According to him, the committee took into consideration the concerns expressed by various stakeholders in the course of compiling the report and that the law that will eventually emerge would protect the interests of the nation, investors as well as those of oil producing communities. "The tax regime recommended in the report is investor-friendly. It is not the highest in the world, it is not the lowest either," he stated.

On the 2010 budget defence, he said it was an opportunity for his committee to review the difficulties in the implementation of the 2009 budget, adding that they would like to know the challenges faced by operators in the upstream sector of the oil and gas industry with a view to finding a way forward with respect to budgetary allocations to projects.

The group managing director of NNPC, Mohammed Sanusi Barkindo, in his response, gave an overview of developments in the upstream sector, explaining that the proposals in the 2010 budget were made in recognition of the key role oil would continue to play in the sustenance of the Nigerian economy in the foreseeable future and the need to guarantee further investments in the sector.

Source: Oil industry budgets $10.726bn for 2010