The Government intends to invest in the revitalization of marginal production fields in oil industry, to attract more private investment and increase the revenue collection for development.
The information was transmitted by the Minister of Mining and Petroleum Resources, Diamantino Pedro Azevedo, when he presented at the National Assembly, in Luanda, the draft law of legislative authorization on the Adequacy of Contractual and Fiscal Terms in Petroleum Concessions with Marginal Discoveries.
"The reasons that support the revision of the legislative diploma in question have to do with the need to improve the current conditions of investment in the oil and gas industry as a relevant condition for the future development of the country", he explained the minister, before the deputies.
Speaking during the eighth ordinary plenary meeting of the National Assembly, which appreciated and voted in general terms the diploma that revokes the Presidential Legislative Decree 02/16 of 13 June, the official explained that the legislation in force has effects contrary, which has "postponed" the development of discoveries in the fields marginal to the main blocks.
"In Angola, in this condition of marginality, several resources are identified, with some discoveries with some antiquity (...) whose development, considering the size and the necessary infrastructures, has been postponed or made unfeasible over time, given the contractual and fiscal terms of the concessions, which considers them to be economically unfeasible", he maintained.
According to Diamantino Pedro Azevedo, it is a "strategy" for the Government and Sonangol, as a national concessionaire, "to develop all discovered resources instead of keeping them underground with the aim of transforming oil potential into wealth national commercial".
"As well as guaranteeing and protecting the interest of the State and the parties involved", he said, stressing that the previous diploma "did not adequately serve these purposes", and the one now appreciated encompasses the "standardization" of various procedures.
p>This diploma, he also explained, "has to standardize the contexts, setting single tax rates in place of a differentiated taxation, depending on the resources".
"Thus, auguring greater speed in the analysis of projects and the feasibility and control of these fees, also reviewing the procedure for declaration of marginal discovery, making its application more equitable", also pointed out the official.
The proposal, approved in general by the parliament, authorizes the President of the Republic, as holder of the executive power, to "uniform and define the assumptions, typology, limits, scope of application, procedures and other determining aspects for the development of the resources in question".
It also allows "to ensure that the regulatory and fiscal framework sets specific incentives for the development of marginal discoveries, in order to enable investment decision-making by all entities involved in the execution of oil operations".
source: verangola.net
