The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) has alerted Nigerians over what it described as a deliberate distortion of facts and figures about its operations by desperate vote-seeking politicians.
The corporation, in a statement issued yesterday by its spokesman, Ohi Alegbe, noted that as a public entity with responsibility to the government and people of Nigeria, the corporation was focused on its mandate and would not be distracted by the spate of politically inspired polemics against its operations.
While calling on members of the public to discountenance sensational comments about its operations being bandied about by some desperate politicians, the NNPC said that it was specifically worried about the recent report credited to some civil society organisations alleging that it had committed N152 billion to execute the turn around maintenance (TAM) of the nation’s four refineries between 2011 to 2013.
According to the NNPC, while a decision was taken in 2011 to rehabilitate all refineries using the original refinery builder (ORB) of each of the refineries, the corporation made recourse to a new strategy after the ORBs declined participation and nominated some partners in their stead who came up with outrageously unfavourable terms.
“The nominated partners, as sole bidders, came up with humongous price offers after two years of thorough and exhaustive scope of work definition and price negotiations. The proxies were also unwilling to provide post rehabilitation performance guarantees,” Alegbe said.
The spokesman added that the new arrangement which kicked off in October 2014, entailed phased and simultaneous rehabilitation of all refineries using in-house and locally available resources in line with the spirit and letters of the Nigerian Content Law.
The strategy he added, also embraced the direct use of original equipment manufacturer representatives to effect major equipment overhaul and rehabilitation.
The statement further disclosed that it was projected that the new strategy would create 70 per cent reduction in costs which would help in mitigating the financing challenges of the NNPC visa-a-vis refinery rehabilitation.
“The phased rehabilitation programme started in October 2014, after the required funding stream was established, and will last for 18 months,” Alegbe stated.
“Over 60 per cent of TAM materials have been delivered to Port Harcourt Refinery and installation of such equipment and parts is in progress”, Alegbe said, adding that material orders and deliveries to Kaduna and Warri refineries were substantial and sufficient to operate the production process.
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