The Hindu Business Line : Paradip port hopes for early completion of mooring project

Situation dock
Work put off due to inclement weather.
The prospects of crude traffic at PPT appear remote
More than 20 ships now waiting at port for berths.

Our Bureau

Kolkata, Oct. 15 Paradip Port Trust (PPT) is keeping its fingers crossed over the prospects of an early commissioning of the single point mooring (SPM) in the port by the Indian Oil Corporation. The commissioning will yield an additional traffic of about one million tonnes (crude) a month. At present, the port does not handle any crude.

“Inclement weather in the past few months has stopped the foreign contractor from completing the job,” according to a spokesman for PPT. “There were as many as six cyclones in September alone”.

The work to be completed involves installing the mooring and connecting the laid-out pipeline with the mooring. The ship from Australia, which is undertaking the work, will hopefully arrive soon.

After several revisions, IOC had set December 2007 as the deadline for completing the work and commissioning the SPM. Accordingly, the Shipping Ministry as well as the PPT authorities had fixed the port’s traffic target for 2007-08 at 45.7 million tonnes (mt), including three mt of crude traffic materialising in the last quarter with the commissioning of the SPM.

As the situation stands now, the prospects of crude traffic appear to be remote. This means that the port has to settle for a traffic throughput of 42.7 mt or so compared to 38.5 mt in 2006-07.

The PPT authorities seem confident of achieving the throughput of 42.7 mt by March 2008. Till September, the traffic handled was around 20 mt despite the setback in cargo handling in the past few months due to bad weather.

“We have to post 10 per cent growth in throughput in 2007-08 over 2006-07 to achieve 42.7 mt and till September our growth has been more than 12 per cent despite suspension of normal operations for several days in the past few months due to bad weather,” the spokesman observed.

The bad weather has thrown up yet another problem — long queue of ships waiting for berths. More than 20 ships are now waiting at the port. “We’re trying our best to ease the congestion as early as possible,” the spokesman said.

Dredging status

PPT, as it was pointed out, was also waiting for the final CCEA clearance of the Union Government for the revised estimate of the dredging job to be undertaken by the Dredging Corporation of India.

“We will swing into action as soon as we get the clearance,” he said, adding that one month would be needed for the mobilisation and one year to complete the job. “Hopefully, the dredging work should be over by November/December next year,” he added.