Nigeria, Africa’s top oil producer, said it’s in talks with Royal Dutch Shell Plc (RDSA), Exxon Mobil Corp. (XOM) and other energy companies to reach an agreement on tax demands proposed in draft legislation.
“There’s always the intent to try and strike a balance, particularly from the side of government,” Petroleum Minister Diezani Alison-Madueke said today at a conference in Abuja. “There seemed to be such disparity in terms of where we stood on the fiscals.”
The Petroleum Industry Bill, or PIB, is aimed at increasing the country’s share of profits from oil pumped off its shores. The government claims that extraction laws going back to 1993 are based on crude at $20 a barrel and unrealistic at prices that are now more than four times as high. The energy companies have warned Nigeria against driving away investment.