* New administration to root out corruption in NNPC
* Foreign oil companies critical of existing tax proposals
* Petroleum Industry Bill expected to be passed in parts
* Top management to be changed, state oil company split
By Julia Payne
ABUJA, April 15 (Reuters) - Oil firms keen to know howNigeria's president elect Muhammadu Buhari plans to tax themcould be waiting a long time as he makes ending corruption andreforming the opaque national oil company his most urgent sectorpriorities.
Four party sources from Buhari's All Progressives Congress(APC) told Reuters the issue of fiscal terms, seen as crucial bythe industry, will have to wait on current thinking about oiland gas policies for Africa's leading producer.
Crude output has stagnated close to 2 million barrels perday over the past few years, owing partly to underinvestment.
"We need to address the structural issues and leave thefiscal for now," Senator Bukola Saraki, whose APC party controlsboth houses of parliament after a landslide win, told Reuters.
"A more transparent NNPC (Nigeria National PetroleumCorporation) is needed with reasonable accounting," he said.
Buhari owes his March 28 victory against incumbent GoodluckJonathan partly to a perception that Jonathan allowed corruptionto get out of control -- especially in the oil sector.
A string of multibillion dollar oil corruption scandalstainted the NNPC and other bodies that handle energy.
By contrast, Buhari was seen as one of the few Nigerianleaders to have cracked down on corruption during his militaryrule in 1983-1985. Many Nigerians hope he will again.
"The worry is that there's going to be a lot of time wastedin witch-hunting...That could take a year in which nothing elsewill happen," said a Nigerian investment banker focused onupstream oil and gas projects, who declined to be named.
APC leader Bola Tinubu, whose support was instrumental inBuhari's victory and wields huge influence, told Reuters atranstional committeee would be set up.
"No way will we discuss that now," he said.
FAILED OIL BILL
Jonathan's administration re-drafted a Petroleum IndustryBill (PIB) in 2012 that had been in the works for a decade.
The PIB was meant to change everything from fiscal terms tooverhauling the NNPC, environmental rules and revenue sharing,but its comprehensive nature caused disputes between lawmakers.
Yet the main thing the oil companies were worried about wastax. The bill proposes 20 percent tax on offshore projects and50 percent for onshore. Shell, Exxon and othermajors had all complained publicly that the terms are unfair,given the risk associated with operating in Nigeria.
Uncertainty over the fiscal terms of the bill have beenholding back billions of dollars of investment, especially intocapital-intensive deepwater offshore, leading some to proposethe bill be broken up into several pieces debated separately.
"It doesn't need to be an omnibus, you can take thingspiecemeal," one APC source said.
Hopes that doing so would resolve the fiscal issue quickerlook slim, since the voting public are much more concerned aboutcleaning up graft than making oil majors happy.
The average Nigerian benefits little from the country's hugeenergy resources while politicians wear gold watches and buildmonster homes in the capital Abuja.
Also, says Control Risks' Thomas Hansen, "The cabinet needsto strategise first and fiscal terms are likely to take longerand require discussions with the (international oil companies)."
APC sources say the new administration will first sack andreplace the top management of the state oil company. Then itwill review its accounts to restore credibility.
A bill will be drafted to break the NNPC into four entities,as already prescribed in the latest PIB draft. But it will also,crucially, remove the oil minister from the NNPC's board ofdirectors to curb political interference, one APC source said.
Others said more generally that the minister's currentpowers would be heavily trimmed.
Oil and gas will have separate companies for upstream, witha third covering pipelines and refining, and a fourth will be aninspectorate. It could be submitted to parliament in the firstquarter of next year, one parliamentary APC source said. (Additional reporting by Tim Cocks in Lagos and Joe Brock inJohannesburg; Editing by Tim Cocks and Angus MacSwan)
