Nigeria's Minister of State for Petroleum Dr. Ibe Kachikwu has announced that The Federal Government will next week announce a major overhaul of the NNPC as well as the firm’s unbundling into 30 different companies according to the
Minister of State for Petroleum Resources and Group Managing Director of
the NNPC, Dr. Ibe Kachikwu. He stated that the government has
started resolving the governance issues in the oil and gas sector,
adding that an overhaul had not happened at the corporation in the past
20 years. This was disclosed at the
Society of Petroleum Engineers’ Oloibiri Lecture Series in Abuja on
Thursday. He further stated that the latest financial report of the NNPC for
the month of January showed that the corporation’s losses had reduced
from the over N160bn of some six months ago to about N3bn.
“We are
starting first with simple governance issues; those that are not
contentious, that are very rapid and that deal a lot with the
transformation of the national oil company.
“For the national oil company, a lot of
work is going on; I am sure some of you have seen the effects; but
within the next one week, we are going to be announcing some real major
overhaul of the system, one that hasn’t been done in over 20 years.” He also stressed further that “The effect of that will
be to quite frankly unbundle the huge company into four to five main
operational zones – the upstream, downstream, midstream, refining, and
of course, every other company that is trending to the venture group.”
“But what is more important is that at
the same time, we are also unbundling the subsets of these companies to
close to about 30 independent companies with their own managing
directors; and so, titles like the group executive directors, which you
have been used to in the last 30 years, will disappear; and in place of
those, you are going to have chief executive officers.” This, he said, would make people take
responsibility for their titles, as the positions must mean something
and not administrative roles.
He added that that
focusing on gas policies was a key element for him, adding, “The target
that I am setting for myself is a 12-month type agenda to try and arrive
at some of these conclusions: some working with the (National)
Assembly, and some working with policymakers and the industry.”
Kachikwu said he had been involved in so
many conversations with oil companies and that the essence was to
define stipulated contractual terms in the industry.
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