The Hindu Business Line : Crude carrier to be anchored at BPCL-KRL single point mooring

Kochi, Dec. 1 For the first time a Suezmax Crude Carrier will be anchoring on December 15 at the BPCL-KRL’s Single Point Mooring (SPM) facility 19.4 km off the Puthuvypeen Island near here.

The project with an approved cost of Rs 810 crore is expected to be completed at around Rs 800 crore, Mr E. Nandakumar, Executive Director, Kochi Refineries Ltd, told Business Line on Thursday. Originally the approved cost was Rs 623 crore, but due to cost escalation it was raised to Rs 810 crore.

He said that a trial pumping would be held on December 3 when the tanker carrying 80,000-tonne crude is scheduled to arrive at the SPM. Three regular operations will take place between December 3 and 15.

The Very Large Crude Carrier (VLCC) that will be mooring close to the floating buoy will be carrying 1,40,000 tonnes of crude.

Sourcing crude

Currently, the refinery receives crude — from Bombay High and through imports — at the Crude Oil Terminal of the Cochin Port Trust and uses tankers of up to 70,000 million tonnes due to draft limitation of the Cochin channel. This results in higher transportation costs for KRL, especially when the crude is sourced from far off sources.

At present every third day a tanker is arriving at the port and thus 11 tankers a month carrying crude dock at the port. With the commissioning of SPM, this number would be reduced to six and that would make a saving of around Rs 110 crore a year, which would go up to Rs 180 crore when the capacity expansion of the refinery is completed by 2009 to 9.5 million tonnes per annum, he said.

The SPM facilities can handle VLCCs up to 3-lakh-tonne capacity.

A submarine pipeline will carry crude oil from the SPM to the Shore Tank Farm, having a storage capacity of 2,40,000 kilo litres of crude oil, at Puthuvypeen Coast, before it is pumped to the refinery at Ambalamugal, Mr Nandakumar said.

More Stories on : Shipping | Petroleum | Bharat Petroleum Corporation Ltd

Article E-Mail :: Comment :: Syndication :: Printer Friendly Page

Stories in this Section
Stay in touch with your doc as you fly

Crude carrier to be anchored at BPCL-KRL single point mooring