FG Unveils Plan to Split NNPC Into 30 Firms Next Week

The Federal Government will next week announce plan to overhaul the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) and split it into 30 firms.

The Minister of State for Petroleum Resources and Group Managing Director of the NNPC, Dr. Ibe Kachikwu, while speaking at the Society of Petroleum Engineers’ Oloibiri Lecture Series in Abuja on Thursday, said the government has started resolving the governance issues in the oil and gas sector, explaining that an overhaul had not happened in the corporation for the past two decades.

“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”, Kachikwu said.

Also, stated that NNCP financial losses had reduced from N160bn recorded some six months back to about N3bn as shown in the financial report for the month of January.

Explaining the restructuring plan in the oil sector, the minister said “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.”

This he said would make people function in accordance with their titles and add meaning to their positions and not just administrative duties.

He further explained 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.”

“So, at the end of the day, a CEO of an upstream company must deliver upstream results, and we are very focused on that and along those chains. We are doing very dramatic things within the sector to bring the change and I am happy that we are gaining the cooperation of people within the industry; that is the only way we can guarantee sustainable career path for those in the industry.”

“We are potentially moving in a direction where quite frankly for the first time in about 15 years, this company will be profitable; but that is a tip of the iceberg, because by the time these 30 companies are unbundled with their managing directors setting programmes, you are going to meet us in the active work space, we are going to be competing and we are going to make these things work.”