Venaani wants answers
Piquet Jacobs
During a visit to the National Fuel Oil Storage Facility on Monday this week, Member of Parliament and Leader of the Popular Democratic Movement (PDM), McHenry Venaani, highlighted concerns of the security and profit-ability of the star-of-the-art facility.
The facility consists of a tanker jetty, multiple product pipelines and a terminal consisting of seven tanks with a capacity of 75 million litres. The tanks are used to store petroleum products like diesel, ULP (unleaded petrol), and HFO (heavy fuel oil).
According to Venaani, the facility is one of the government’s biggest investments and it is important to get a clear understanding of what exactly money was spent on especially in the light of cost escalations.
The project was estimated at a cost of N$3.7 billion in 2015 when construction commenced, but costs have since soared to N$6.5 billion, with the government planning to put up an additional N$87 million in November 2021. “The biggest question is the escalation of pricing because this thing cost double of what is was supposed to cost. We must ask the hard-hitting questions of what led to the escalation. Telling the country that because of the United States Dollar (USD) ex-change rate, the costs have increased, nothing in economics can increase due to fluctuation in foreign currency. We need to hear the answers as to what really transpired,” he said. In response to this, Senior Structural Engineer, Kondwani Chirembo commented that costs escalated due to changes which had to be made to the original designs to fulfill all the wants and needs prescribed by the government.
Another matter stressed by Venaani, the matter of security, “one thing that you must realise is the oil industry is a very highly competitive industry. You are competing with companies such as Puma and Engen. If you have visited the Niger Delta Pipelines and you know what is happening in that part of the world, you would realise that such a facility would need
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