House Legislation Body: Oil and Gas Bill Agreed as Replacement Bill

The Working Committee for the Harmonisation, Rounding, and Consolidation of the Conception of the Oil and Gas Bill has agreed that the Oil and Gas Bill will continue to be drafted in the format of a replacement bill. Committee Chairman Sturman Panjaitan, who is also Deputy Chairman of the House Legislation Body, stated that various key points raised during discussions with Commission XII of the House as the bill’s proponent were agreed upon in the committee meeting. “We agreed that this bill will become a replacement bill and carried out technical improvements and refinements on 39 items, while notes on substantive aspects are fully handed over to the proponent,” Sturman said when delivering the committee’s report at the Legislation Body’s plenary meeting in Jakarta on Saturday. The committee’s work was presented at the plenary meeting of the House Legislation Body at the Parliament Complex in Senayan, Jakarta. The agreement was reached after the committee completed 39 items of technical improvement in the bill’s draft. He further outlined a number of changes in the draft resulting from the committee’s meeting. In addition to establishing the replacement bill format, the committee agreed on several technical refinements, including the removal of the elucidation of Article 7 and the relocation of the word “contractor” to become a standard definition in Chapter I on General Provisions. Other technical improvements included corrections to article references, standardising the use of the word “dalam” to “pada”, and refining punctuation from semicolons to full stops. The harmonisation report was prepared based on statutory provisions governing the duties and authority of the Legislation Body in harmonising, rounding, and consolidating the conception of bills before submission to the House leadership. Based on the review of technical aspects, substance, and principles of legislative drafting, the committee stated that the Oil and Gas Bill may be submitted as a House initiative bill. “The committee is of the view that the Oil and Gas Bill may be submitted as a House initiative bill. However, the committee leaves the decision to the Legislation Body’s plenary meeting as to whether the harmonised formulation of the Oil and Gas Bill produced by the committee can be accepted by the plenary meeting,” he explained. He added that the process of harmonisation, rounding, and consolidation of conception is an important part of ensuring that the bill to be submitted meets both technical aspects and the principles of legislative drafting. Concluding his remarks, Sturman expressed appreciation to all committee members, Commission XII of the House as the bill’s proponent, the secretariat, and the expert teams who had completed the harmonisation process of the Oil and Gas Bill up to that stage.