Nigeria is planning an initial public offering for assets owned by its national oil company, the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), by 2018, according to Nigerian Minister of Petroleum Resources, Emmanuel Kachikwu, Bloomberg reports.

Nigeria, Africa’s top oil producer, will sell shares in its refining and distribution business and “select” exploration and production assets.  “It is inevitable,” Kachikwu said. “Part of the cleaning up process that we are doing is to prepare for that.”

The minister, who also heads NNPC, explained that the state-run company will reorganize into four more efficient business units, rather than the more than a dozen, which are currently taking losses. NNPC manages Nigeria’s stakes in joint ventures with international oil companies and operates refineries and Nigeria’s distribution network which affect about 180m people.

In addition, a long-delayed energy reform bill will probably be passed “quickly” after it was split in order to separate a “very contentious” fiscal aspect from non-fiscal parts, the minister added.