The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation
(NNPC) will soon be broken up into 30 profit-
making companies, according to Ibe Kachikwu,
Nigeria’s Minister of State for Petroleum
Resources and Group Managing Director of the
NNPC. The minister also disclosed that each of
the thirty companies would have its own
managing director.
“For the first time, we are unbundling the subset
of the NNPC to 30 independent companies with
their own Managing Directors,” Mr. Kachikwu
said in his address at the 25th Oloibiri Lecture
Series and Energy Forum in Abuja.
The theme of
this year’s Forum was, “Technological Advances
in Hydrocarbon Exploration and Exploitation:
Solutions to Global Oil Price Stability”. The
Minister of State added: “Titles like Group
Executive Directors are going to disappear and in
their place you are going to have Chief Executive
Officers and they are going to take
responsibilities for their titles. At the end of the
day, the CEO of an upstream company must
deliver an upstream result.”
The Federal Government’s plan to unbundle the
NNPC is expected to happen in a matter of
weeks “as part of the ongoing transformation of
the national oil company,” according to a press
release signed by Ohi Alegbe, group head of the
NNPC’s public affairs division.
Speaking at today’s Oloibiri Forum, Mr. Kachikwu
announced that the NNPC’s operating loss had
been reduced from N160 billion to N3 billion in
January 2016, adding that the corporation should
start generating some profit by the end of 2016.
Mr. Kachikwu also revealed that some members
of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting
Countries (OPEC) are scheduled to meet with
Russian officials in Moscow on March 20, 2016,
in a bid to stabilize tumbling crude oil prices.
OPEC is seeking to enlist Russia’s cooperation in
the adoption of joint strategies that would help
stabilize crude oil prices.
According to Mr. Kachikwu, President
Muhammadu Buhari’s administration was
focused on developing Nigeria’s gas resources “in
order to boost revenue as part of the
diversification policy of the Federal Government,”
according to Mr. Alegbe’s statement.
The minister praised the National Assembly for
its fresh attention to the Petroleum Industry Bill
(PIB), adding that the bill would promote
efficiency in the oil sector. He stated that the
government was working to reduce the
contracting cycle of projects from two years to
six months in the upstream sector, adding that
the current production sharing contracts were
also overdue for review.
Mr. Kachikwu urged all the players in Nigeria’s
oil and gas industry, whether in the upstream,
midstream or downstream sectors, to work
together in order to achieve results in cost
control, contracting circles, technology and
environmental issues. He declared that
stakeholders in the petroleum sector must adopt
an integrated approach to enable them to
address the challenges facing the industry.
In a welcome address, George Kalu, the chairman
of the Society of Petroleum Engineers (SPE),
remarked that this year’s Oloibiri Lecture Series
and Energy Forum coincided with the
60thanniversary of oil exploration and production
in Nigeria. He added that the low price of crude
oil was an opportunity for Nigeria to reduce
costs through industry collaboration.
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