OREANDA-NEWS. Nigerian president Muhammadu Buhari has pledged to reform state-owned oil firm NNPC and improve the country's refinery operations.

Buhari, who was sworn into office in May, has already appointed new senior management at NNPC, renegotiated controversial crude-for-products swap deals, and ordered an audit into how the state-owned firm accounts for oil and gas revenue.

Additional reforms are expected to curb corruption at NNPC and the oil and gas sector.

"Preliminary steps have been taken to sanitise NNPC and improve its operations so that the inefficiency and corruption could be reduced to a minimum," Buhari said today.

"Those of our refineries which can be serviced and brought back into partial production would be enabled to resume operations so that the whole sordid business of exporting crude and importing finished products in dubious transactions could be stopped."

NNPC operates the Port Harcourt, Warri and Kaduna refineries that have a combined capacity of 445,000 b/d. But the refineries rarely operate above 30pc of available capacity, mainly because of damage to crude pipelines that supply them with feedstock.

Buhari submitted his first list of cabinet ministers to legislators yesterday. He is expected to retain the position of oil minister in the cabinet and appoint a junior minister of state for petroleum.

Nigeria produces 2mn b/d.