Reps probe $43m off-shore oil contract By Lawrence Olaoye, Abuja

The House of Representatives has waded into the controversy surrounding the award of $43 million (about N6.2 billion) contract for the supply of remotely-operated vehicle (ROVs) by Total Upstream Nigeria Limited (TUPNI) to Oceaneering International AG of Switzerland in defiance to the approval given by the board of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC). Reacting to the petition forwarded to the House committee on public procurement chaired by Honourable Yusuf Tuggar by Messrs Tilone Nigeria Limited, the lawmakers summoned the management of TUPNI, NNPC as well as the petitioner to appear before them. TUPNI however refused to show up, thereby drawing the ire of the committee which threatened to invoke its constitutional powers to compel it to appear before it. The committee promised to slam a heavy fine on the company for its failure to honour its summons.
Meanwhile, Mr. Stanford Tassie, managing director Tilone disclosed that his company actually bid for the contract in 2006 and won ahead of Oceaneering but TUPNI went ahead to award same to the latter in defiance of the NNPC’s board directives.
Tassie told the committee that his original bid was falsified by TUPNI so that it could award the contract to a foreign company in contradiction to the Federal Government’s local contents initiative.
He alleged that the oil giant had already concluded arrangements for the award of the contract to Oceaneering in Europe even before the bid was opened just as he maintained that TUPNI had to inflate Tilone’s bid by $10.975million to justify its action for denying him the contract.
Commenting on the matter, Engineer Eldred Nwabufo, acting general manager, material management division, Napims, who represented Mohammed Barkindo, group managing director of the NNPC confirmed that TUPNI actually acted against the corporation’s board directives, adding that it acted in contravention of the Production Sharing Contract (PSC) agreement.
According to Nwabufo, the NNPC through Napims’ group general manager recommended that the contract be awarded to Tilone that actually won the contract even as it ruled that the cost of the contract awarded to Oceaneering in contravention of the board approval be borne by TUPNI.
Honourable Tuggar however declared that the oil company would be invited to state its own part of the story after which his committee would arrive at its recommendations.