South Africa working on new oil, gas policy

Bloomberg

South Africa is working on a policy to govern the development of oil and gas resources after calls by potential investors to shield the industry from a long-running debate over laws that apply to mining exploration.
The finalising of oil legislation has become more urgent since Total SA announced the first significant deep-water oil find off the coast of South Africa in February. Since the discovery, which has an estimated 1 billion barrels of crude reserves, rival Royal Dutch Shell Plc has bought a stake in exploration blocks in the same area from Anadarko Petroleum Corp.
“We need to speedily work to entrench regulatory and policy certainty,” Energy Minister Gwede Mantashe said in a speech to parliament in Cape Town. “The department has begun with the process of developing a Petroleum Resources
Development Bill.”