Italian oil giant Eni and India’s flagship national oil company, Indian Oil Corporation Limited are among international oil trading companies vying to secure term contract for the sale and purchase of Nigerian crude oil grades.
They are among mainly indigenous oil firms including Forte Oil, Eterna Plc, Niger Delta Petroleum Resources Ltd and MRS whose bids were opened at the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) headquarters in Abuja on Tuesday.
NNPC had last month published tender notice for competent oil companies to bid for term contract for the sale and purchase of Nigerian crude oil grades.
The successful companies after the entire process are expected to lift about 900, 000 barrels per day of Nigeria’s crude oil within a 12 months period, starting from January 2016.
Out of the 278 companies that submitted tenders, only 16 companies will be selected for the contract.
NNPC had in September announced it will cut from 43 to 16, the number of beneficiaries of the term contract for the proposed 2015/2016.
The tenders for the 2015/2016 term contract, it was learnt, has been carefully structured to weed out “briefcase companies’’ and rent seekers.
The new process is expected to bring sanity to the market place for NNPC’s crude sales which used to be crowded with intermediaries.
