NNPC

NNPC Signs $1.5bn PH Refinery Rehab.

by with No Comment Business

The drive by the Management of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) to boost in-country refining capacity was bolstered Tuesday with the signing of the Engineering, Procurement, Construction, Installation and Commissioning (EPCIC) contract for the rehabilitation of the 210,000 barrels per day capacity Port Harcourt Refinery in Alesa-Eleme, Rivers State.

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The rehabilitation project which generated criticisms from several quarters has a completion timeline of between 18 and 44 months under a three-phase arrangement was awarded to Milan based Tecnimont SpA at a lump sum contract price of US$1.5 billion, inclusive of VAT and other statutory payments.

An elated Group Managing Director of the NNPC, Mele Kyari, described the PHRC rehabilitation project as a dream come true, noting that the project was in line with President Muhammadu Buhari’s promise to the Nigerian people to make the refineries work.


Tecnimont SpA, the Corporation emerged from a transparent tender process that can withstand any forensic audit, and the corporation will employ the same transparent process for the rehabilitation of the Warri and Kaduna Refineries whose EPCIC contracts to be awarded in June 2021.

READ ALSO : Nigeria’s Fortune Under Risk Over Big Oil Focal ShiftThe GMD explained that the rehabilitation exercise was very different from a routine Turn-Around Maintenance as it would entail a total retrofitting of the plant with major part and equipment replaced with new ones.


Managing Director of Port Harcourt Refining Company Limited, Engr. Ahmed Dikko, providing further insight into the project, explained that Phases 1 and 2 of the project would get the refinery ready to receive hydrocarbon, while Phase 3 will focus on the start-up the refinery for operation, stressing that the entire work shall be delivered in 44 months from today.

Vice President, Sub-Saharan Africa Region of Tecnimont SpA, Davide Pelizzola, pledged the readiness of his company to work assiduously with the NNPC to comply with the terms and obligations of the contract.

The signing ceremony of the PHRC rehabilitation project was witnessed by the Nigeria Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (NEITI), Infrastructure Concession Regulatory Commission (ICRC), Petroleum and Natural Gas Senior Staff Association of Nigeria (PENGASSAN) and the Nigeria Union of Petroleum and Natural Gas Workers NUPENG amongst others.

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NNPC

Cost of petrol subsidy: What NNPC unremitted N4trn can do for Nigerians

by with No Comment financeNews

The Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) is currently being scrutinised by the Wole Oke-led

The billion naira waste Nigeria incurs fixing its leaking pipelines and subsidising petrol is no longer news, but what is news is the opportunity cost forgone by this waste in a creaking economy.

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The Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) is currently being scrutinised by the Wole Oke-led House of Representatives Committee on Public Accounts (PAC) over an alleged failure to remit N4 trillion into the federation account as contained in a report from the office of the Auditor-General for the Federation.

In response, a representative of the NNPC group managing director, Mele Kyari, justified the deductions by saying that it was in line with the law that established the corporation.

“What we do is backed by the provisions of the law. First, the NNPC Act is very clear that we should submit the net revenues of our cost,” the NNPC told lawmakers at the meeting Wednesday in Abuja.

Umar Ajiya, NNPC’s chief finance officer, who represented the GMD, conceded that “there is confusion within government circles at the moment for which a lot of consultations are ongoing on how to handle the implication of sustained subsidy.”

He was responding to a report by the Auditor-General of the Federation claiming the NNPC did not remit N4 trillion.

The corporation admitted that fuel subsidy and other costs accounted for the shortfall in remittance.

However, the issue has further raised concern about how urgently Nigeria plans to reform its alleged corrupt national oil company through a new oil bill yet to be passed after 20 years of first presentation.

Financial experts have raised concern about the opaque system that is bleeding Nigeria’s economy considering the high level of life-threatening hunger in a country with over 95.9 million people living in extreme poverty.

Refineries:

For instance, Emerald Energy Institute at the University of Port Harcourt estimated the construction cost of a 100,000-barrels per day (bpd) refinery plant at $2 billion (N600bn). This means the unremitted N4 trillion could have helped the country construct at least six of such refineries, instead of importing light petroleum products estimated at $15 billion per annum.

Primary health centre, education

Using Freedom of Information requests and analysis by transparency campaign group Public Private Development Centre, it would cost an estimated N28 million to build primary healthcare centre and N17 million for a 3-classroom block. This means N4 trillion is capable of building 142,857 primary health centres or 235,000 blocks of classrooms needed across Nigeria’s 774 local governments.

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