The Hindu Business Line : Paradip Port's oil jetty finds takers now

Paradip Port Trust (PPT), it appears, has to depend on oil refining and marketing companies, both in private and public sectors, to ensure proper utilisation of its 6-mtpa capacity oil jetty built at a cost of more than Rs 50 crore.

Some progress has already been made. Reliance Petroleum has indicated to utilise the jetty. The company proposes to bring by the coastal route half a million tonnes of petroleum products annually, initially, from its Jamnagar Refinery, for sale in Orissa. Essar Oil too is being persuaded by port authorities to use the facilities at the port for pushing its products in the region. The public sector oil companies such as Hindustan Petroleum Corporation and Bharat Petroleum Corporation, that have built the tankage capacity at the port, too, it is felt, will utilise the jetty for handling their products. In other words, PPT is targeting petroleum products for better utilisation of the jetty, though it is not sure if the promised cargo support, even if materialises, will help achieve the objective.

The dependence on products has become crucial as there is no way the jetty could hope to handle crude, though PPT had in view the crude traffic at the time of constructing it. Indian Oil Corporation (IOC), which will shortly start importing huge quantities of crude through the port, will not use the jetty; instead, it will use the single point mooring (SPM) being built off the coast.

For Paradip, the monsoon months are generally critical months when normal working of the port would be often disrupted. However, IOC is believed to have assured the port authorities that the operation of the SPM will in no way be affected even during the monsoon. To be located about 20 km from the port's coastline into the sea, the SPM is a floating mooring where large crude tankers with full load will be berthed for discharging crude for transportation by a pipeline network, partly submersible and partly overland, connected to IOC's storage tanks on land. There is another reason why crude cannot be discharged at the port's oil jetty. There is no evacuation facility from the jetty. Normally, the evacuation is done by pipeline but at present there is no pipeline connection from the jetty to the storage tanks. Till such time the pipeline is constructed, the question of handling crude in the jetty does not arise.