It was reported last Tuesday that Nigeria’s Bureau of Public Enterprises has pre-qualified eight companies to bid for a 51% stake in the Port Harcourt Refinery and Petrochemical Co. The pre-qualified bidders are: Global Oil & Energy, Bluestar Oil Services, Indorama International Finance, Oando Plc, Linkglobal International, Essar Infrastructure, Mittal Investment, and Refinee Petroplus.

 

The government is relinquishing part of its equity in the refinery in an effort to boost domestic refining by Nigeria’s four refineries. The investors are expected to submit their technical and financial proposals after the completion of site visits.

 

PHRPC has two refineries near Port Harcourt in Rivers State, Port Harcourt 1 with a refining capacity of 60,000 bpd of crude oil and Port Harcourt 2 with a capacity of 150,000 bpd. The latter was originally intended to serve as an export refinery, but has shifted to domestic market supply because of frequent interruptions in production from the other three refineries in Nigeria.