The Federal Government yesterday said it is set to carry out the final phase of the restructuring of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, NNPC.
The restructuring will result in the Corporation being unbundled into four components, while about 1,100 of its staff in Headquarters would be eased out.
Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, Mr. Ibe Kachikwuwith Kachikwu, who doubles as the Group Managing Director of the NNPC stated this while speaking at a town hall meeting in Abuja yesterday.
He said that he had received President Muhammadu Buhari’s approval to begin the final phase of the restructuring of the NNPC.
” The unbundling process would see the NNPC broken down into four key components, namely: the upstream company, downstream company, the midstream company, which is gas and power marketing, and the refining group holding company” , Kachikwu said.
According to the minister, a major aspect of the restructuring plan would be in making the Headquarter operations cost effective by reducing over half of the present 2,200 Headquarter staff and re-assigning them to subsidiaries with a view to making them more effective.
Kachikwu also said that the Federal Government is considering and developing new models of financing for the oil and gas industry because it no longer has the resources to fund the sector.
“The country does not have the sort of resources to continue to fund the oil industry. As we go upstream, we are going to begin to see a lot of innovative financing mechanism to provide funding for the oil industry.”
On the country’s refineries, the minister said the final decision on the fate of the refineries would likely emerge in January 2016. Adding that, this would be followed by the adoption of a price modulation mechanism..
Meanwhile, the Federal Government yesterday denied insinuations in some quarters that it has concluded plans to increase the pump price of fuel from N87 to N97 per litre as from January 2016.
Dr. Kachikwu dispelled the rumour at a press conference in Abuja.
He explained that when operational, the novel price modulation system will place a N97 per litre cap on the price of fuel to ensure that Nigerians are insulated from the vagaries of the global crude price.
“I did not say that refined petroleum products will sell for N97 per litre next year. I said that between a band of N87 and N97 we are going to be looking at prices and today the prices are largely close to N87. So, there is no need to change the price.’’, the minister said.
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