By Ahmed Gafar Alade, in Lagos
Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), the Nigerian state hydrocarbon company, has publicly opened bids for the Engineering, Procurement, and Construction phase of the rehabilitation of the Port Harcourt Refining Company
A company statement claims that the exercise was “a new chapter” in the corporation’s refineries rehabilitation project
The event, which held virtually, had in attendance external observers such as the Bureau of Public Procurement (BPP), Nigeria Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (NEITI) and the Civil Liberties Organizations, according to a press release by Kennie Obateru, the Group General Manager, Group Public Affairs Division, “This signals the imminent take off of the second phase of the rehabilitation of the Port Harcourt Refinery whose first phase was completed earlier in the year”, the statement says.
The bids were submitted electronically and, the NNPC says, they would be viewed virtually. They were submitted through the NipeX portal for the pre-qualification for technical evaluation. The NNPC statement contains assurances that “the process provides a level playing field for all bidders”.
In the press release, Mele Kyari, Group Managing Director of NNPC, restated the Corporation’s oft repeated statement that it was committed to revamping the four Refineries including the Warri Refinery and the Kaduna Refineries.
The NNPC has announced revamps of its refineries, all of them with total input capacity of 445,000BOPD, several times in the last 20 years. It is now self-evident that there haven’t been any revamp in those years.
Last July, Kyari said that the failure to fix the refineries over these years was a strategy problem, as they never knew what they wanted to do with it. He said that the corporation didn’t get the right advisory services and the right strategy to go through with it.
When exactly will the job kick off?