No hope for oil exportation this year as Parliament must pass Bill

The prospects of exporting oil from Turkana fields this year faded as it emerged that Parliament must pass the Petroleum Bill before this can happen.

Just like the previous Bill, the bone of contention between the National Government and Turkana leaders remain how to share the proceeds of oil export.

Leader of Majority in the National Assembly Aden Duale has republished the Bill after Parliament went on recess ahead of the General election without concluding the previous Bill.

“We will table it and the relevant committee will look at it. It will then head to Senate,” he said.

PROCEDURE
Given the long process that a Bill takes before it becomes law, which includes public participation and committee stages, coupled with heavy legislative agenda of a newly elected Parliament the Bill may spill over to 2018 before it becomes law.

President Uhuru Kenyatta had declined to sign the first Bill as passed and asked Parliament to reconsider the formula of sharing proceeds of export.

Mr Duale said the Bill will have to go through the whole process and hopefully the President’s thoughts reconsidered.

In September last year, President Kenyatta wrote to Parliament asking legislators to reconsider sections of the Petroleum Bill that they had just passed.

PROCEEDS
The President suggested to the MPs to pass the Bill with a provision that the local community where oil was discovered gets five per cent, while county government receives 20 per cent and the National Government retains 70 per cent.

MPs had given the local community 10 per cent.

National Assembly okayed the memorandum but Senate was yet to debate it before it went on recess.

The memorandum by the President had turned the debate to a political issue between Jubilee and ODM.

ELECTIONS
According to Turkana South MP James Lomenen, the Bill cost Jubilee the Turkana governor’s seat as Governor Josphat Nanok capitalised on the President’s memorandum to recapture the seat.

“The governor went around telling people that the government will steal their oil. We had to ask the President and Deputy President William Ruto to wait until after elections before any talks on oil exports can continue,” Mr Lomenen said.

Jubilee finally got three constituency seats and the women representative while Nasa managed the governor’s seat, three MPs and the senator.

TAX
Now, Mr Lomenen fears that his county may head to uncharted waters if the Bill is not passed without the input of the Turkana community being heard.

He says there seems to be a universal agreement that the local community should get 10 per cent and he advises the government to heed the call but tax the proceeds.

Mr Lomenen said Ministry of Energy mandarins had advised the President to reject the 10 per cent assigned to the community arguing it was not in line with international best practices.

“We cannot compare ourselves with other countries because ours is a unique case, we are unlike Kuwait or Norway.

"We have to have our home grown solutions. They also argued that the county government had shown it has a low level of consumption, that is skewed analysis, because another governor can use resources more prudently,” he said.

He warned: “In the end it will be difficult to evacuate the oil using trucks since even the locals were not allowed to participate in the tenders for transporting the oil by road.”