NNPC opens bids for new refineries

The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation {NNPC) has received bid from nine companies intending to co–establish refineries alongside the four already existing ones.

This move is to increase the nation’s refining capacity from 445,000 barrels per day to 650,000 in order to ensure that there is permanent solution to the perennial fuel scarcity being experienced in the country.

According to Anibo Kragha, NNPC’s chief operating officer {COO} refineries who spoke at the opening of the technical bid for the location of new refineries within the existing refineries in the country yesterday in Abuja, the open bidding exercise was a demonstration of the determination of the federal government and the NNPC to increase the nation’s refining capacity from 445,000 barrels per day to 650,000.

“The aim is to leverage the existing facilities to fast track the take-off of the refineries as soon as possible,” the COO noted.

According to him, a technical evaluation committee has been set up to study the bids and anPrenounce winners as soon as possible.
Speaking earlier, Sophia Mbakwe ,the corporation’s general manager, Supply Chain Management, enjoined all the companies to accept the outcome as the exercise would be transparent.

She stressed that all the rules of public procurement as spelt out in the Bureau for Public Procurement Act would be strictly adhered to.

The exercise was witnessed by representatives of the Nigerian Extractive Industry Transparency Initiative {NEITI} and the Bureau for Public Procurement (BPP}.