Stakeholders in the oil and gas
sector have called for an efficient
and attractive fiscal policy in the oil
and gas sector to help drive
investment and infrastructure
development in the country. The
stakeholders disclosed this at the
Virtual workshop on Leveraging
Fiscal Regulations to Attract
Investments in the Petroleum
sector, on Thursday. Mr Osten
Olorunsola, Chairman, Energy
Institute Nigeria, said that the oil
and gas sector in Nigeria needed a
lot of investment to meet with the
current global challenges. He stated
that globally, the industry had
witnessed decline in product
demand and low price regime,
adding that only low cost molecules
would be able to make it in the
market. Olorunsola said that the
sector in Nigeria needed to
transform to meet with current
trend as the sector was not buoyant as perceived by
many. He noted that the Nigerian
government need to define what
energy transformation meant to it
and focus to ensure that it delivered
on policies that would develop the
sector. “We need steady revenue,
growth in all spheres of the sector
and value-oriented leaders.”We
need to speed up with legislation to
ensure that oil in the ground does
not remain there and also create
enabling environment for business
to thrive. “All these will give rise to
sustained investment,” he said
Olorunsola further said that fair
sharing remained the bone of
contention in designing fascal
policy. He advised that the new
policy must ensure that change of
government would not affect the
sector, and must be simple,
transparent, socially
inclusive and flexible. “Beyond
competitiveness, we must aim at
fiscal protability. “Investment in
the sector will be enhanced with
good fiscal regulations. “We need
more transformation in scal
policy to achieve the desired
result,” he added. In her remarks,
M r s A u d r e y J o e – E z i g b o ,
P r e s i d e n t , N i g e r i a n G a s
Association (NGA), said that
Nigeria need to move as a nation
that could generate foreign
exchange and create employment.
She said that a lot need to be done
to attract investors in the sector
adding that Nigeria could take a
cue from what Egypt had done in
the past five years to develop their
oil and gas sector.
contributed 9.14 per cent to GDP, other oil nation like Angola and Kuwait contributed 50 and 40 per cents
respectively to their nation’s GDP.
“Like Nigeria, Egypt has 61 Trillion Cubic Feet (TCF) of gas and 42TCF of gas yet to be discovered. This is
small compared to what we have here in Nigeria.
“They started importing gas when they saw that domestic production was no longer meeting domestic
demand. “Egypt with good policy recognized this and unlocked their economy and had signicant discovery
and today, they are self-sufcient,” she said She noted that scal policy was signicant to investors, adding
that the NGA believed that natural gas could help bring about a lot of changes in the industry.
Joe-Ezigbo noted there was need to look at types of resources in the country in creating the scal policy and
ensure a stand-alone policy for gas. She advised that government should also create landscape that
incentivises gas, look at bottlenecks in contracting among others. “It is imperative to pass scal policy, for
upstream, downstream and midstream with gas having a stand-alone policy. “The policy must address the
dearth of capital and investment and must see gas as economic enabler that should not be over-taxed,” the
NGA president added. Also speaking, Mr Joe Nwakwe, Chairman, Society of Petroleum Engineers, Nigeria
Council, said that government must know that oil and gas also belonged to the next generation and hence
good policy was imperative. He said that the new scal policy must capture that to be realistic, adding that
issues of Host Community must be critically looked into to ensure safety of workers. “Fiscal policy must
strengthen licensing of operations and ensure peaceful production environment. “The host communities
must also be happy with the business happening in their locations,” the SPE chairman said.