4 months after resuming international freight business, NIDAS makes waves

Abiodun OBA

The Group Managing Director of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, Dr Maikanti Baru, was elated by the profits recorded by NNPC/NIDAS four months after it was inaugurated into international freight business.

NNPC’s Group General Manager, Group Public Affairs Division, Ndu Ughamadu, in a statement issued in Abuja on Thursday, said the corporation’s boss also charged partners involved in the Direct Sale Direct Purchase scheme of the corporation to patronise its shipping subsidiary, NIDAS Limited.

Baru said this would not only ensure sustained profitability of the corporation’s shipping subsidiary but would also impact positively on the group revenue of the national oil firm.

DSDP is a scheme by which the NNPC sells crude oil directly to offshore refiners and receive products from same in return.

Baru charged its Crude Oil Marketing Division and NNPC Trading Limited during his visit to the oil firm’s office in Hammersmith, London, where he met the members of staff of both the London office and NIDAS.

Baru was quoted as saying, “I wish to commend NIDAS for beginning to make money for the NNPC. I am particularly elated with the company’s performance which has seen it doing 15 voyages on clean petroleum products from October 2018, just four months after it resumed international freight business.”

The Managing Director, NIDAS Limited, Lawal Sade thanked Baru for his efforts in revamping the moribund company.

“Our recent modest successes wouldn’t have been possible without Dr Baru’s support. We are truly inspired by this visit and we are ever ready to achieve the targets set for us by the NNPC management,” Sade added.

He also stated that NIDAS had already signed Contract of Afreightment with British Petroleum and Socar for their DSDP clean cargoes, while discussions with Vitol, Mercuria and Petrocam were ongoing.

Sade told his guest that NIDAS was able to fix vessels below its competitors’ rate recently, a development that made some companies, particularly Oando, to come to NIDAS for a spot charter, adding that the NNPC subsidiary was in the process of deploying IT facilities that would enable it to monitor its ships.

NNPC/NIDAS was established in 2007 as a fully-owned subsidiary of NNPC charged with the mandate of shipping clean petroleum products into Nigeria and West Africa.