The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, NNPC has opened technical bids submitted by a total of 91 companies for the provision of coastal and bunkering vessel services.
While declaring the exercise open, the Group Managing Director of the NNPC, Dr. Ibe Kachikwu expressed delight in the massive turn out of indigenous Nigerian companies and vessel owners in the bid process.
“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”Kachikwu stated.
Dr. Kachikwu pledged to sustain the ongoing reform process in the corporation 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 on going bid exercise is for the operations of the Pipelines and Products Marketing Company, PPMC,a subsidiary of the NNPC.
They are targetting the services of reputable organisations with essentially three ranges of Dead weight 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 evacuate petroleum products from NNPC coastal refineries to various discharge ports in Nigeria or outside Nigeria as may be designated by PPMC.
Others are the delivery of those 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 them at water depots among other functions .
The desired bunkering vessel services will load petroleum products from water-fed refineries, supply bunkers to NNPC owned and chartered vessels as required on a monthly basis.
Other services include keeping accurate accounts for the products loaded and supplied to NNPC vessels and forwarding records of the bunkering activities to the Marine Transport department of the PPMC on a monthly basis among other activities.
The bidding exercise was conducted on Thursday at the Corporate Headquarters of the NNPC in Abuja in the presence of representatives of the bidding companies, officials of the Bureau of Public Procurement, BPP and the Nigerian Extractive Industry Transparency Initiative, NEITI as independent assessors, reports VON.
Posted by Janice Johnson
