Trial run of single-point mooring deferred due to squally weather

Squally weather has forced the authorities to defer the trial run of the long-awaited single-point mooring – an offshore buoy designed to pump and siphon imported crude oil to a storage facility – at Moheshkhali in Cox’s Bazar.

A ship carrying 82,000 tonnes of crude oil from Saudi Arabia arrived at the mooring point on Saturday night and the trial run was set to begin on Sunday.

Md Lokman, managing director of Eastern Refinery Ltd (ERL), said they could not start the trial run as Bangladesh Meteorological Department asked the ports to hoist cautionary signal No. 3 over the bad weather, according to bdnews24.com.

Officials at the Bangladesh Petroleum Corporation and ERL said preparations have also been made to commission the second pipeline. They are hopeful about officially inaugurating the facility sometime in July or August.

At present, the country imports more than 6 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 dollar.