Designed to make NNPC "an independent oil company... like any other", Ajumogobia cited Saudi Arabia's Aramco, Malaysia's Petronas and Brazil's Petrobras Energia SA. as corporate models for the state's main income generator.

A break-up into five separate units is envisaged for the company formed in 1997 through a series of accords with Anglo-Dutch group Royal Dutch Shell, ExxonMobil Corp. and ChevronTexaco (originally two companies), France's Total and ENI SpA unit Agip Oil.

Adolphe Moudiki, executive general manager of Cameroon's National Hydrocarbons Corporation (SNH), noted that a number of cross-border oil production and transport projects could serve as models for future Cameroun-Nigerian projects.

"On the technical plan, this cooperation has fostered the achievement of major cross border oil infrastructure projects such as the Chad/Cameroon pipeline, the West African gas pipeline between Nigeria and Ghana, or the trans-Saharan gas pipeline between Nigeria and Algeria. So we could also achieve the same type of cooperation in the Gulf of Guinea," he said