The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) has announced the commencement of the public opening of technical bid submitted by 91 companies.

The technical bid is to secure contracts for the provision of coastal and Bunkering vessel services, which is to be used for the operations of PPMC (the pipeline and product marketing company), an affiliated company of NNPC,the Group General Manager, Group Public Affairs Division, Ohi Alegbe disclosed in a statement.

The coastal vessel was created to transport petroleum products from NNPC’s coastal refineries to various discharge ports in Nigeria or outside Nigeria as may be designated by PPMC and undertake the delivery of petroleum products to water fed depots with restricted draft jetties of 6.0 to 11metres.

The bunkering vessel services would also involve the loading of Automated Gas Oil (AGO) and low Pour Fuel Oil (LPFO) from water-fed refineries for bunkering purposes. The duty of the vessel is to also keep accurate accounts for AGO and LPFO loaded and supplied to NNPC Vessels as well as forwarding records of the bunkering activities to marine transport department of the PPMC on a monthly basis.

According to the statement, the exercise was supervised by representatives of the bidding companies, officials of Bureau of Public Procurement, (BPP) and the Nigerian Extractive Industry Transparency Initiative, (NEITI) as independent assessors.

The NNPC is determined to get the best result in terms of value addition and best services while also promoting the Nigerian local content, it said adding that the ongoing bid exercise is looking to engage the services of well known organizations with three ranges of Deadweight Tonnage (DWT) 5, 000-8, 000 DWT, 10, 000- 20, 000 DWT and 25, 000-50, 000 DWT respectively, Breaking times reports.