TIME TO REVIEW OUR OIL & GAS ACT AND THE MINING ACT
By CHARLES KERUA Background I am prompted to write this after reading an article on the Australia’s Financial Review on a court battle between Oil Search Ltd & Inter Oil Ltd over the development rights (or pre-emptive rights) of the Elk-Antelope oil fields in the Gulf Province; a ruling which is expected to be handed down this March 2015 in London, UK. Many intelligent people will agree that our State & its people have “thrown away” so much of our natural resources so cheaply in the name of foreign investment and foreign capital injection. (Let us keep our discussion within the mineral & petroleum sector, and leave for a while other equally important sectors like forestry and fisheries). Proponents of foreign direct investments (FDIs) in our extractive industry have meticulously “seasoned” the spin offs, or so called “economic benefits”, of FDIs such as job creation, substantial foreign reserve base/cover, and tax revenue as a rosy cover to lure the State