The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) yesterday announced that 91 companies have bided to secure contracts for the provision of Coastal and Bunkering Vessel Services for lifting and delivering of its crude oil.
Group Managing Director of NNPC, Dr. Ibe Kachikwu, while declaring the bid exercise open, explained that the technical bids by the 91 companies consist largely of indigenous vessel owners.
Recall that NNPC had on July 15 this year banned 113 tankers from engaging in crude oil/gas loading activities in any of the terminals within the nation’s territorial waters, a decision that was later reversed by President Muham- madu Buhari. Kachikwu expressed delight at the massive turn out of indigenous Nigerian companies and vessel owners in the bid process, which also had officials of the Bureau of Public Procurement (BPP) and the Nigerian Extractive Industry Transparency Initiative (NEITI) as independent assessors.
“I am happy that there is much show of interest in this process. The process is going to be transparent from the beginning to the end and we want the best yield in terms of value addition and best services and obviously we are going to grow the Nigerian content in this regard. I am hoping that you are going to be part of the journey we are taking NNPC through,’’ Kachikwu said.
He pledged to sustain the ongoing reform process in NNPC, which has witnessed the monthly publication of NNPC Financial and Operational Transactions for public scrutiny and the recent public harvesting of bids tendered for the new offshore processing contracts, among other initiatives.
The ongoing bid exercise seeks to engage the services of reputable organisations with essentially three ranges of Deadweight Tonnage (DWT) 5,000-8,000 DWT, 10,000- 20,000 DWT and 25,000-50,000 DWT. Under the scope of work, the Coastal Vessel is designed to provide the following services; evacuate petroleum products from NNPC coastal refineries to various discharge ports in Nigeria or outside Nigeria as may be designated by PPMC, delivery of petroleum products to water-fed depots with restricted draft jetties of 6.0 to 11metres, as well as conduct ship-to-ship transfer of cargo from import tankers and discharge same at waters depots among other functions.
The desired bunkering vessel services entail loading of Automated Gas Oil (AGO) and Low Pour Fuel Oil (LPFO) from water-fed refineries for bunkering purposes, supplying bunkers to NNPC owned and chartered vessels as required on a monthly basis, keeping accurate accounts for AGO and LPFO loaded and supplied to NNPC vessels, forwarding records of the bunkering activities to marine transport department of the PPMC on a monthly basis, among other activities.
