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The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) will this year lose its state ownership status as it goes to the stock market for Nigerians to subscribe to its equity.
When this is done, the corporation will lose its status as a regulator and cease to make policy but become an operator and become subject as other operators to the rules and dictates of the market. 
A major objective of the proposed move which is part of a holistic reform of the oil and gas industry is to subject the NNPC which is seen as a drainpipe on the system to the best accounting and operational standards.
This is part of the expectations from the sector this year and which details is contained in the oil and gas reforms bill currently with the federal lawmakers for the draft committee to defend before February this year.
NNPC, like other state owned enterprises, has been in a sorry state becoming a source through which the government bleeds and loses huge revenue due to political interference. 
The oil and gas sector reforms committee was set up by the National Council on Privatisation (NCP) in September 2000 during the Olusegun Obasanjo administration. Its main purpose is to transform the nation from oil and gas endowed state to oil and gas producing state.
The committee submitted its report in 2006 but its implementation was delayed due to political interference by some powerful interest groups which are beneficiaries of the current status of the sector.
Mohammed Ibrahim, member oil and gas sector reform implementation committee, who disclosed the transformation of the corporation said the details had been worked out and would be released immediately the draft bill is passed and signed into law. 
He assured that Nigeria would have a better and positive oil and gas sector in 2009 pointing out that the new structures evolved for all the current state owned institutions in the sector would shield them from political interference.
“Finally, we are now going to have the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited. What we have now is the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation. It will no longer be a corporation it will become the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited. 
“It shall now be a limited liability company that shall be governed by the rules of the Companies and Allied Matters Act (CAMA). It is now clearly a limited liability company that eventually would be floated on the Nigerian Stock Exchange,” Ibrahim said.
The implication is that NNPC will be strictly for commercial purpose and cease to play regulatory function. “It shall be strictly limited to a commercial activity; if it makes money fine, if it looses money too bad,” he said.
The corporation currently performs the function of a regulator, operator and designs policies for the oil and gas sector.
Ibrahim explained that floating its equity in the capital market would allow the country’s over 150 million people to buy shares in the company though the state will still have some equity in it.
This status, Mohammed said, will minimise the level of interference because it risks closing down if it looses money and pays dividend if it makes money which makes it responsible and under the discipline of commercial governance.
“The moment the bill is passed into law, I can assure you that we have our own plans that would enable us to hit the ground running. If that bill is passed into law today and the president signs the bill into law, in the next minute you are going to see a brand new transformed NNPC hitting the ground,” the oil and gas reform committee member said. 
The new NNPC Limited would be basically a holding company with subsidiaries like the PPMC, NPB, and NETCO. 
The subsidiaries would themselves be hybrid. For instance, if the PPMC now becomes the new marketing company of the NNPC, it shall not be owned 100 percent by the NNPC Holding Limited. 
The PPMC may become PPMC plc with private ownership as some of its shares would be divested to the Nigerian public probably with some private core investors. 
“So we would try for NNPC not to own subsidiaries 100 percent until it has the capacity to do so. There may be a period of tutelage that would encourage NNPC to have subsidiary units that are in the hands of private capital, private experience with NNPC representing the state”.
“We will infuse the necessary discipline to prevent or reduce to the barest minimum, political interference which has been a major plank for the failure of the Nigerian oil and gas industry,” Mohammed said.
“The extent or the percentage of equity that shall now be made available to the private sector is yet to be determined. We are in the process of a reform agenda and also the NNPC may in future go into some venture partnership with other private sector holders in setting up new companies”.