The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation has shortlisted 78 out of 300 companies that applied to bid for the rehabilitation of Nigeria’s oil pipelines and depot infrastructure.
Malam Mele Kyari, Group Managing Director of NNPC, made this known on Friday at a virtual public bid opened for the rehabilitation of NNPC’s downstream critical pipelines and associated depots/terminal infrastructure.
According to Kyari, the companies that will eventually emerge as winners are expected to carry out the project on a ‘build, operate and transfer’ system.
Explaining the BOT process, he said, “You know that this project requires huge finances that is why we are adopting BOT, pipelines globally are managed by the private sector. What we are doing today is in line with global best practices.
“The NNPC is challenged because of resource constraints. Today, we do not have all the resources required to reform these assets which have become so vulnerable and have lost value and integrity over time.”
Speaking further, he stated, “Some of them are as old as 40 years. They are due for replacement and when you want to do replacement of this scale, we do need a lot of resources, which we don’t have.
“We have decided that we will bring in private partners who will rehabilitate the pipelines. They will fund it. They will operate it with us and ultimately, they will recover their investment from the tariff on the pipelines. As soon as they recover their costs, earn their margins, they will hand them over to the country; that is what we want to do.”
Kyari, however, lamented that oil pipelines deteriorated over the years as a result of activities of hoodlums and vandals, who had forced the pipelines to be under-utilised.
He hinted that by the first quarter of 2021, names of selected companies for the bid would be announced, and would have a maximum of two years to deliver on the project.
Musa Lawal, a representative of NNPC downstream, remarked, “NNPC as an IETI company will continue to ensure accountability and transparency. In line with this, we have virtually invited other partners as observers.
“We have Infrastructure Concession Regulations Commission, Nigeria Extractive Industry Transparency Initiatives, Bureau of Public Enterprise, among others as our observers.”
