The endless plans of the Federal Government to restructure the nation’s oil giant, the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) and list same at the Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE) got a fresh breath weekend.
This is coming on the heels of the outlining a plan to overhaul the corporation and eventually list it on the stock exchange by the Minister of State for Petroleum.
Government believed that the new plan will save the system from intractable instances of corruption and abuse.
It would be recalled that the Ministry of Petroleum Resources had released a draft late on Thursday to buttress the oil sector reform.
Details of the proposal show that the ministry is seeking to end the country’s reliance on oil exports and shift to a “gas-based industrial economy.”
The proposal posits that the country needs to reform the oil sector or risk output falling.
The plan further showed that “Unless there are additions to reserves and those reserves are brought into production, Nigeria can expect to see absolute declines in production from around 2020”.
Part of the reason to unbundle NNPC is to turn it to a structure that will work like a private sector driven entity and remove all bureaucratic features known to have been frustrating the empire for years.
The draft sighted by Business Hilights weekend said “The NNPC will be made autonomous from the state, it will relinquish all its policy making and regulatory activities, and it will be treated on an equal basis with private sector operators for projects”.
The proposal said a newly formed corporation could sell stakes “so long as the government shareholder retains effective control and ownership.”
However, all the permutations, according to the Minister, are dependent on the possible approval of the lawmakers for the document because NNPC remains a creation of the law and can only be restructured by the amendment of the law setting it up.
