By EMMANUEL ADDEH, Abuja

The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) yesterday commenced a bidding process for the provision of operations and maintenance services at the country’s three petroleum refineries.

The facilities include: the Port Harcourt Refining Company (PHRC), Warri Refining and Petrochemical Company (WRPC) as well as the Kaduna Refining and Petrochemical Company (KRPC).

While calling for qualified entities to indicate their interests in the contracts, the national oil company stated that it was seeking to engage reputable and credible Operations and Maintenance (O&M) companies to operate and maintain the three facilities to ensure reliability and sustainability in order to meet the nation’s fuel supply obligation.

According to the corporation, the scope of work shall cover long term as well as short term production/operations planning, production and operations execution, monitoring, reporting and optimisation of operations.

For close to two years, the comatose facilities have not refined a drop of crude oil, although the corporation continues to spend close to N10 billion monthly in the “operations” of the non-functional assets.

The NNPC further noted that the contractors that would be eventually selected would be expected, among others, to engage in process and controls engineering, quality control, quality assurance and laboratory, environmental management as well as turn-around-maintenance planning and execution.

The contractors, the NNPC stated, must have experience in such maintenance jobs in Africa or in Nigeria and must provide at least three specific examples of O&M services and or Engineering, Procurement, Construction (EPC) experience on refinery, gas processing, LNG and other process industries.

In March, the Federal Executive Council (FEC) approved the sum of $1.5 billion for the rehabilitation of the largest refining firm in the country, the Port Harcourt refinery, awarded to an Italian company, Tecnimont SPA, to be carried out in three phases of 18, 24 and 44 months.

The NNPC also noted that any company to be considered for any contractual agreement must provide, among many others, evidence of compliance with the provisions of Industrial Training Fund (ITF) Amendment Act 2011.

In addition, the corporation urged all applicants to comply with the Nigeria Social Insurance Trust Fund (NSITF) Act by inclusion of current copy of compliance certificate expiring on 31st December 2021 as well as evidence of compliance with PENCOM Reform Act 2004 by inclusion of valid pension clearance certificate expiring on 31st December 2021.

It said that all prospective bidders must disclose whether or not any officer of the relevant committees of the NNPC or the Bureau of Public Procurement (BPP) is a former or present director, shareholder or has any pecuniary interest in the bidding firm.

It noted that the organisation must not be in receivership, nor the subject of any form of insolvency of bankruptcy proceedings, not a tax defaulting company and that it does not have any director who has been convicted in any country for a criminal offence relating to fraud or any financial impropriety or criminal misrepresentation of falsification of facts relating to any matter.

The company must also have audited accounts for the past four years, provide evidence of latest credit ratings and the name of the rating agency, with a demonstration of a minimum average annual turnover of at least $2 billion for the financial year ending 2020 and provide evidence of compliance with the local content Act, said the NNPC.

“Only shortlisted firms at EOI evaluation will be invited at a later date for collection of request for proposals. NNPC is not bound to shortlist any firm and reserves the right to annul the procurement process at any time without incurring any liabilities in accordance with Section 28 of the Public Procurement Act 2007,” the corporation said. (THISDAY)

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