INVESTIGATION: NNPC caught in procurement fraud, sells multi-billion naira slop oil to non-existent firm

The first two bid-winning companies of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC)’s controversial slop oil sale have been found to be owned by the same directors just as PREMIUM TIMES has found that the third preferred company – the eventual bid winner – is not registered at the Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC).

These are but some of the fresh facts tumbling out of the closet at the NNPC weeks after the Group Executive Director (GED) Refinery, Mustapha Yakubu, supervised a controversial bid that saw scarce slop oil – traditionally reserved for local industries – being controversially offered to preferred bidders that are export companies. The slop oil consignment is domiciled at the Port Harcourt Refining Company (PHRC).

Figures from separate financial bids submitted by the three companies are a window to the behind-the-scenes manoeuvres that underpinned the entire bid exercise. Specifically, they show that the three preferred bidders, namely Sign Oil &Gas Ltd, Synthesis Integrated Pure Oil and Gas Limited and Kurpo Energy Ltd possibly took cues from NNPC insiders and decision-makers.

While Nigeria’s public procurement rules forbid any form of insider dealing, abuse of process and collaborative exploitation of nonpublic material information, the financial quotes submitted by the three export companies suggest everything but the contrary.

A six-naira difference is a common factor in their three separate financial bids. While the first preferred bidder, Sign Oil & Gas Ltd quoted N111.00K per litre, the second preferred bidder Synthesis Integrated Pure Oil quoted N6 less at N105.00K per litre while the third preferred bidder, Kurpo Energy Ltd bid N99.00K per litre – a further N6 lesser than the second.

Checks at the Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC) by PREMIUM TIMES confirmed the worst suspicion. The first and second preferred bidders are owned and promoted by connected individuals. While the first preferred bidder – Sign Oil & Gas Ltd – has Orereh Kingsley and Orereh Oghenetejiri as directors, the second preferred bidder – Synthesis Integrated Pure Oil and Gas Ltd – has Orereh Kingsley and Orereh Oghenerukevwe as directors.

The checks threw up even more startling revelations: the third bid winner, Kurpo Energy Ltd, was not registered with the CAC as of Tuesday morning, suggesting that the NNPC was either complicit in a monumental economic crime or that it failed to carry out due diligence on the transaction.

Weeks back, PREMIUM TIMES reported how cash-hungry NNPC officials sold off to an export company 30 million litres of slop oil reserved in Port Harcourt Refinery as a national strategic stock.

The sale, carried out under a shady bid process, got industry stakeholders, particularly local manufacturers, reeling because slop oil has never been exported in the history of the NNPC. What’s more, the taboo transaction was capable of precipitating disastrous knock-on effects on local industries thereby sabotaging the Buhari administration’s economic programmes.

For local manufacturers in Nigeria – particularly those in labour-intensive industries like textiles, cement, rubber processing, food and beverages – slop oil is the only alternative to Low Pour Fuel Oil (LPFO), a product of fractional distillation that keeps the boilers of manufacturing industries running. The LPFO is also used in power generating plants to get around the challenge of acute gas shortages.

However, 24 months ago when the Port Harcourt, Warri, and Kaduna refineries completely halted the refining of crude oil to give room for major rehabilitations slated to last 44 months, LPFO as a corollary has gone off the market. With this harsh reality, it is the slop oil that has come in as a stop-gap arrangement and indeed a last-ditch measure to keep the many beleaguered but still faithful local industrialists from moving their operations to neighbouring countries.

Industry watchers are baffled at the uncanny coincidences of each of the first three preferred companies bidding N6 differently from the next. To them, the bid appears very well-coordinated and lacking in character.


PREMIUM TIMES learned there have been a lot of behind-the-scene moves since the bid winners were announced. The first allocation issued to Sign Oil & Gas on June 22, 2021, expired with the company unable to meet a 10 working-day deadline for payment.

On July 8, 2021, the allocation was transferred to the second bid winner, Synthesis Integrated Pure Oil at N105.00k per litre instead of N111.00k per litre. It came with a 10-day deadline. Like Sign Oil before it, Synthesis was also not able to meet payment obligations.

True to the expectations of keen watchers wary that the entire bid exercise was a deception ab initio, the slop oil allocation fell on the lap of the third preferred winner, Kurpo Energy Ltd at N99.00k per litre. This development has generated widespread belief in the oil industry that not only was the bid process tailored to sell the slop oil to handpicked bidders but also at the lowest quote possible.

https://www.premiumtimesng.com/news/headlines/484354-investigation-nnpc-caught-in-procurement-fraud-sells-multi-billion-naira-slop-oil-to-non-existent-firm.html

EFCC to d rescus

SadiqBabaSani:
EFCC to d rescus

Lol
U dey call kidnappers to arrest thief
Birds of the same feather

SadiqBabaSani:
EFCC to d rescus

Lol rescue fire...

Dey are blind laik diz....


So far no b Yahoo boy or someone from the opposition...

NNPC, PDP, APC, NDDC and the presidency together with all Nigerian politicians are they most useless fraudulent set you can find anywhere around the globe...

Anyone that is surprised by this news must be either just an infant that has not fully grasped Buhari's presidency this past 6 years or a mentally challenged individual that wouldn't have had d full faculties to decipher and understand his true person.
The man asides being very,very incompetent as a ruler is pure scam in both his life story and what he stands for.
Corruption and Buhari and everything he oversees are birds of the same plumage.
I have been telling people I can vouch anything that if a true forensic audit of the finances of NNPC is made during the financial year that claims NNPC has under Buhari made a profit for the first time in 40years,it would be found to be a purely cooked up report.
Buhari cannot oversee a corrupt free or corruption level tolerable goverment,ministry or parastatal.
Right from his days in 1984 when he corruptly allowed his associate to take out or bring in money through d airport when those of others were being seized by the same military government,to his corruption rich period overseeing the PTF,the man is corruption personified.
Unfortunately all these were seen by some of us after 2015,but some imps despite seeing it,still voted him for a second term in 2019.

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Buhari whose driver was taking advantage of his mental cluelessness to cash out, talk more of civil servants.
The amount of corruption going on under his cluelessness is of epic proportions.