By Adedapo Adesanya
Plans by the Nigerian National Petroleum Company (NNPC) Limited to launch its long-awaited initial public offering (IPO) got a fresh boost as President Bola Tinubu gave his blessings to the move.
This was disclosed by the Group Managing Director of the state oil company, Mr Mele Kyari, at a just-concluded oil and gas conference held in Abuja on Tuesday.
Although he did not disclose a timeline for the actualisation of the goal, he said the public offering could come “soon.”
Business Post had reported that in July last year, Mr Kyari gave an assurance that the IPO had been planned by mid-2023 as NNPC Limited, which became a commercial entity under erstwhile President Muhammadu Buhari, no longer has recourse to state funds, easing pressure on the coffers of the nation’s treasury.
Its shares and assets, including oil blocs and refineries, are now held by the Federal Minister of Petroleum and the Minister of Finance, and the move would give the public a chance to invest in the company.
NNPC Limited operates joint production ventures with Western oil majors, but an IPO will make it more transparent.
Initially, the NNPC had in September 2021 said the date for the planned IPO would be 2024 after it made a profit for the first time in 44 years.
“We want to get ready. The earliest consideration would be in three years’ time,” he said then in an interview with Bloomberg.
He also said NNPC would first need to recapitalise and get its books in order, and the ministries of finance and petroleum would need to sit together to approve sales of company shares.
“IPO already means this company is going to be profitable,” Mr Kyari said.
Market experts say the IPO seemed likely to be the next course following the implementation of the Petroleum Industry Act (PIA), which decentralised the government corporation and made it into a company structure.
Modupe Gbadeyanka