MRPDA Amendment Bill: Key Amendments for the South African Oil and Gas Industry

LAGOS (Capital Markets in Africa) – The principal South African upstream oil and gas legislation, the Mineral and Petroleum Resources Development Act, 28 of 2002 (MPRDA), has been in flux since 2013 when the first draft the Mineral and Petroleum Resources Development Amendment Bill, 15 of 2015 (the Bill) was published.

On 16 December 2015, following the Bill’s passage through the South African National Assembly (the lower house of Parliament), the President exercised the power conferred upon him by section 79 of the Constitution to refer the Bill back to the National Assembly due to reservations as to its constitutionality.

The reservations identified by the President were both substantive, relating to certain contentious provisions included in the Bill, as well as procedural, due to an alleged failure by Parliament to facilitate adequate public participation in the process. Accordingly, and in order to remedy the defects identified by the President, the National Council of Provinces’ Select Committee on Land and Mineral Resources (the Select Committee) conducted an extensive public participation process in 2017, in all nine provinces. The process allowed for written submissions by members of the public in respect of the Bill. The final deadline for written public submissions was 28 June 2017.

Following the public participation process, the Select Committee collated the comments received from the public to date. Consolidated amendments were then provided to the provincial legislatures of each Province. Each provincial legislature also considered the public comments which were submitted directly in each province.

In the latter half of 2017, each provincial legislature was afforded the opportunity to consider proposed amendments to the Bill, and were mandated to present a ‘negotiating mandate’ to the Select Committee indicating which amendments that province would like to see included in the Bill. Before the end of the parliamentary term in November 2017, the Select Committee received negotiating mandates from 8 of the 9 provinces (the Western Cape delaying their response).

An extract from Bouncing Back: African Oil and Gas. Please download by clicking: INTO AFRICA PUBLICATION: MAY 2018 EDITION.

Contributor’s Profile
Lizel Oberholzer is a director at Norton Rose Fulbright South Africa and based in Cape Town. She is an admitted attorney in South Africa with over 16 years’ experience in the energy sector in Africa.  Her experience in the energy sector together with the good relationships she has established with key regulatory figures in Africa is invaluable when advising and representing clients.

She focuses on the upstream, midstream and downstream regulatory field of oil and gas, as well as the negotiating and drafting of various oil & gas contracts in many jurisdictions in Africa, which include Namibia, Mozambique, DRC, Kenya and Tanzania.  Local and international clients rely on her extensive knowledge of the mineral and petroleum legislation in Sub-Saharan Africa.  Industry associations rely on her to represent them at workshops with the Department of Mineral Resources and to comment on proposed changes in law.

Prior to joining our practice, she was the head of the oil and gas department at another leading law firm, and has also worked as in-house counsel to an oil and gas company and the Petroleum Agency of South Africa.

Lizel has a B.Proc, LLB and LLM (law of contract).  She also furthered her studies in the United States of America and the United Kingdom in order to gain further knowledge on contract specific to the oil and industry