Oscarline Onwuemenyi
20 April 2016, Sweetcrude, Abuja – The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) has finally unveiled guidelines for the privatisation of its three refineries with submission of bid documents scheduled for May 30, 2016.
A statement from the Corporation on Tuesday said that it intends to engage investors as joint venture technical partners for the rehabilitation and operation of the three refineries located in Port Harcourt, Warri and Kaduna.
“The NNPC is seeking to engage reputable and qualified investors to enter into a joint venture (JV) arrangement with the NNPC to fund, rehabilitate and jointly operate any of the three refineries for commercial viability including but not limited to off-take of refined products for sale primarily in the Nigerian market,” NNPC said.
According to NNPC, the JV will require the Corporation and the investor to jointly operate the refineries and would be given all off-take and marketing rights to the refined products while operations are to include provisions for technical processes and procedures, strong safety policies, performance and profitability metrics, Nigerian content plans, including technology/capacity transfer and training programmes.
The refineries would be jointly operated by NNPC and the selected investors for a defined period until investments are fully recovered.
And to give credence to the privatisation process, the corporation has equally called for bids, explaining that the objective of the tender is to integrate the technical, operational and financial requirements to rehabilitate the three existing refineries in Nigeria with a view to meeting and/or exceeding the defined performance metrics for operations at 100 per cent capacity utilisation.
The tender process, according to NNPC, is for proposals for a technical/commercial framework through a partnership with NNPC, to achieve high levels of operating performance for the three NNPC refining assets with a combined refining capacity of 445,000 barrels per stream day (BPSD).
NNPC stated that bids should be submitted separately for each refining company, adding that the prospective investors can bid for a refinery or refineries of interest, adding that only one refinery would be awarded to each successful bidder.
However, it maintained that preference would be given to bidders with demonstrable international experience in world-class, profitable refinery operations with strong safety track record.
It stated further that all refinery rehabilitations/upgrades are to be completed by December 31, 2016 or the nearest possible date as agreed by NNPC and the investor(s).
The corporation also disclosed that the investor(s) eventually selected would be required to develop operational effectiveness models that would cover projected increased production at each location in line with the recently advertised NNPC refineries relocation and collocation tender targeted at increasing domestic crude oil refining capacity from the present level of 445,000 BPSD to 695,000 BPSD.
