The Federal Government on Tuesday finally put a date to its plan to privatize the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC).Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, Dr. Ibe Kachikwu who spoke on Tuesday at the sidelines of an energy meeting in Abu Dhabi said Nigeria plans to make its first initial public offering of assets owned by NNPC in 2018.
There have been several efforts in the past to privatize the NNPC, which met with stiff opposition from Nigerians including labour unions.
“It’s inevitable,” Kachikwu, who is also Group Managing Director of the corporation said “Part of the cleaning up process that we’re doing is to prepare for that.”
Kachikwu said some of the assets that will be up for privatization are in the refining and distribution business and “select” exploration and production assets to the public, according to a Bloomberg report.
NNPC manages Nigeria’s stakes in joint ventures with international oil companies that pump the country’s crude. It also operates refineries and a distribution network of depots and pipelines across the country of about 180 million people.
With reorganization, the NNPC is expected to evolve into four efficient business units from more than a dozen that are mostly making losses, and return to profitability, according to Kachikwu.
A long-delayed bill to reform Nigeria’s oil and gas industry will probably be passed “quickly” by lawmakers after it was split to separate a “very contentious” fiscal aspect from non-fiscal parts, he said.
