Nigeria reshuffles oil posts

Nigeria's President Olusegun Obasanjo has reshuffled several of the country's top oil industry posts in what analysts say boosts prospects for reform.

Edmund Daukoru, a free-market reformer, has been appointed presidential adviser on oil, replacing Rilwanu Lukman.

And Funso Kupolokun replaces Jackson Gaius-Obaseki as chief of state-owned Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation.

"The reshuffle is driven by political, ethnic and reform considerations. Daukoru is pro-reform," said Bismarck Rewane of consultants Financial Derivatives Company.

President Obasanjo is known to want to remove NNPC's monopoly over import of refined oil products.

In a television programme broadcast on Sunday, he said: "Maybe those who get involved in the monopoly of importation are also ensuring that the refineries are not working satisfactorily.

"Maybe if there is no monopoly it will be easier to get our refineries to work."

Mr Daukoru is former group managing director of both Shell Nigeria and NNPC.

Mr Kupolokun is a former group executive director of NNPC.

Nigeria is Africa's biggest crude oil exporter but suffers from severe petrol shortages.