By Sebastine Obasi

The Nigerian Government, through the Ministry of Mines and Steel Development has partnered PricewaterhouseCoopers, PwC to ensure a transparent and hitch-free bitumen bid round. 

The Seven-month process which started in May is expected to be rounded up in November, 2022. Speaking during a virtual media interaction, Cyril Azobu lead, Mining Practice at PricewaterhouseCoopers Nigeria stated that the mandate of PwC on the Bitumen Programme is a key component of the recommendation of the Bitumen Committee to address key challenges associated with the legacy process that has now been officially terminated. He said, “PwC received a letter of award from the Ministry of Mines and Steel Development on 11 November 2021 to act as its Transaction Adviser/Program Manager to manage the competitive tender process for selection of bidders for development of Nigeria’s delineated bitumen blocks. 

“The scope of the PwC mandate will ensure that, given uniqueness and peculiarities of the exploration, development, and extraction of Bitumen, only suitably qualified local and international investors with pre-requisite experience, technological expertise and financial capacity are selected to carry-out bitumen development to a meaningful extraction-level, through a transparent and competitive procurement process as enshrined in the Nigerian Mineral and Mining Act, 2007 and in line with global best industry practices. 

“As part of the initial steps, the MMSD, in collaboration with PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), embarked on an aggressive media marketing and publicity campaign, to create awareness for the competitive bidding programme within local and international bitumen investment community. Three workshops held at the Nigeria-Africa Natural Resources and Energy Summit, Abuja, Nigeria, Mining Indabba, Cape town South Africa and Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada (PDAC), Toronto Canada within the months of May and June. 

“To execute the bidding process, PwC has adopted a two-stage bidding process in line with extant procurement policy. These includes the (i) Request for Qualification stage (RFQ) and (ii) Request for Proposal (RFP) stage for selection of the competent investors with demonstrated pre-requisite experience, technological and financial capabilities under a transparent and competitive process. We are currently at the first stage of the process (RFQ) advertised through both local and international media, inviting suitably qualified and interested prospective bidders, some of whom are currently in attendance at this session. 

“The output of this process will be a pre-qualification report, identifying pre-qualified bidders for submission to Ministry for ratification prior to issuing invitations requesting submission of technical and financial proposals at the second stage – Request for Proposal (RFP) stage. At the second stage, PwC will receive proposals from pre-qualified bidders at the proposal submission deadline, evaluate these submissions and submit its final report identifying selected reserved and preferred bidders per sub-block, based on already established and agreed evaluation criteria, for ratification by the Ministry PwC anticipates that the entire process will be concluded by November 2022,” he said.