The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, NNPC, has announced that 78 companies have submitted bids to rehabilitate the corporation’s downstream pipelines, associated depots, and terminal infrastructure.
The corporation said the rehabilitation projects will be done through the finance, build, operate and transfer model.
Mele Kyari, NNPC’s Group Managing Director, in a statement issued in Abuja by its spokesperson , Kennie Obateru said the exercise was in fulfillment of the corporation’s commitment to transparency and accountability as an Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative partner company.
According to him, the finance, build, operate and transfer model became imperative in the corporation’s journey to rehabilitate its downstream infrastructure which over time had become vulnerable, lost value, and integrity due to age and incessant vandalism.
He added that some of the assets were as old as 40 years and were due for replacement, adding that to carry out such a replacement of this magnitude, there would be need for resources.
He said: “And we know that we require these assets so we decided that we bring in private partners who will fund these pipelines; they will construct operate them with us.
“And ultimately they will fully recover their investment from the tariff which we will pay for using these pipelines and as soon as they recover their cost and their margin, they will hand over these assets back to us.”
Kyari stated that by the end of the first quarter of 2021, the final partners of the bid opening would be selected.
He assured the bidders that the NIPEX portal which was deployed for the pre-qualification exercise was a time tested technology that would not give room for any human indiscretion.
The corporation’s Chief Operating Officer, Downstream, Lawrencia Ndupu, who was represented by the Managing Director, Petroleum Products Marketing Company, Musa Lawan, said the Nigerian Pipelines and Storage Company operates 5,120 length of pipelines.
She said the pipelines traverse the entire country with two coastal depots in Lagos and Calabar, adding that the public bid opening processes were being done transparently.
