Introduction
In tandem with "revival" efforts to enact the
Petroleum Industry Bill (PIB), the PIB Task Force's deliverable
will foreshadow an Executive Bill to be (re)submitted to the
National Assembly. Given the divergence in previous versions, tax
fiscal provisions of the new PIB will be of particular interest.
The recent trial and appellate decisions in NDDC v
NLNG (2009) 1 TLRN 25; (2011) 4TLRN 1 comes
to mind, against PIB's expressed intent to overhaul petroleum
fiscal landscape, vis a vis potential implications on
subsisting industry contracts.
The PIB's "resource nationalism" objective should
not surprise anyone: Nigeria owes herself a duty to extract optimal
value from its natural endowments, although how well that is
deployed for national benefit is another matter. The Economist of
11/2/2012 stated: "resource nationalism is nothing
new...Nor is the practice confined to developing countries that
feel they came off second-best when negotiating resource
