Image: allafrica.com
Successful bidders in the tender to rehabilitate Nigeria’s downstream pipelines, depots, and terminal infrastructure will be announced in the first quarter of 2021, the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) stated during its recent virtual public bid round opening.
As a partner company of the Extractive Industry Transparency Initiative, the public bid round supports the Corporation’s pledge to transparency in the governance of oil, gas and mineral resources. Accordingly, the Corporation has committed to disclosing its transactions, contracting processes, selection of partners and identities of partners and beneficial owners of the partners.
“This company must be accountable and must be transparent to its shareholders,” said NNPC Group Managing Director, Mallam Mele Kyari, in a statement. “We must take all necessary steps to make sure that our transactions are known to the citizens of this country, that we do things for the common good and that in doing our business, we ensure integrity.”
According to the state-owned oil company, the rehabilitation project will utilize a Finance, Build, Operate and Transfer model, which lends itself to the restoration of damaged and outdated downstream infrastructure.
“Some of these assets are as old as 40 years. They are due for replacement, and when you need to do a replacement of this scale, you need a lot of resources,” said Kyari. “We know that we require these assets, so we decided that we will bring in private partners who will fund these pipelines. They will construct it, they will operate it with us, and ultimately, they will fully recover their investment from the tariff, which we will pay for using these pipelines. As soon as they recover their cost and their margin, they will hand over these assets back to us.”
According to the Director General of the Infrastructure Concession Regulatory Commission (ICRC), Chidi Izuwah, the NNPC has demonstrated a high level of transparency and accountability, yielding favorable results for the Corporation and its shareholders and aligning with the ICRC’s drive to revitalize existing infrastructure.
“You showed to the world that you’re driving a totally transparent public-private partnership process in line with the infrastructure revolution of President Muhammadu Buhari,” said Izuwah. ” I commend the Group Managing Director, his team, and NNPC Group for showing to the world that things can be done properly and in the best interest of the shareholders.”