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The long-awaited single-point mooring (SPM) -- an offshore bouy designed to pump and siphon imported crude oil to a storage facility -- is now ready for inauguration.
Once operations begin, tankers will directly unload petroleum onto the floating buoy, set up in the deep sea some 9 km southwest of Matarbari in Moheshkhali.
The project is being implemented at a cost of around Tk 83.41 billion. Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina will inaugurate the SPM project sometime this year, reports bdnews24.com.
Highlighting the progress of the initiative, Monjed Ali, a project official, said around 97 percent of the work had been completed.
"The time to offload a tanker will drop to 48 hours from 11 days once the SPM starts running. Lighter ships will no longer be required [to carry the oil to the storage facility] after the implementation of the project. This will save the government a huge amount of foreign exchange by reducing transport costs and wastage.”
The project falls under a government-to-government agreement between Bangladesh and China. Eastern Refinery Ltd, a subsidiary of Bangladesh Petroleum Corporation, is implementing the project in tandem with the contracting firm, China Petroleum Pipeline Engineering Company Limited.
According to the district administration, six storage tanks and pumping stations have been constructed across an area of about 90 acres. Of these, three are for refined oil and three for crude oil.
Each refined storage tanker has a capacity of 50,000 cubic metres. The crude storage tanker has a capacity of 30,000 cubic meters.
Crude oil and diesel will be unloaded from the SPM through two separate pipelines. After that, crude oil and diesel will be pumped to Eastern Refinery through two other pipelines from the Moheshkhali storage tank.
Eastern Refinery, the country's only state-owned oil refinery, can currently purify 1.5 million tonnes of crude oil per year. The refining capacity will increase to 4.5 million tonnes when the second unit of the Eastern Refinery is commissioned. The SPM will help increase the purification capacity further.
At present, the country imports more than 6.0 million tonnes of fuel by sea. But infrastructural limitations at the Chattogram Port and navigability issues along the Karnaphuli channel prevent mother vessels from offloading fuel directly.
As a result, these tankers are anchored in the deep sea and unload crude oil through small lighterage vessels. It takes about 11 days to unload a tanker with a capacity of 100,000 DWT.
As the method is time-consuming, risky and expensive, the SMP project was initiated in 2015. The project was supposed to be completed by December 2018 at a cost of Tk 49.4 billion, but the deadline has already been extended three times.
The delays also drove up the project outlay to Tk 71.3 billion. ERL authorities believe that the cost will rise a bit more due to the increase in the value of the US dollar.
“The crude oil shipments are usually transferred from the mother ship to a lighter vessel before being taken to Chattogram. The process takes 10-11 days and costs a lot of money," said Manjed.
"The SMP project will allow us to unload crude oil from a ship in 48 hours."
This will help the government save around Tk 8 billion. Authorities launched a trial run of the SMP earlier in July.
“But there was a delay due to a small accident. We have sent a report to the ministry. They will make a decision on the matter soon."