Transportation of crude oil of IOCL to Haldia- Barauni refinery affected in Paradip of Orissa
Paradip   11-Sep-2010

Transportation of crude oil of the IndianOil (IOCL) has been severely affected for frequent defunct of the single point mooring (SPM) in Paradip so the target of IOCL to procure crude oil would also affect in this financial year.

IOCL installed SPM system in the Bay of Bengal, at about 20km from Paradip shores for unloading of crude oil brought by tankers. The SPM system was commissioned on 28th December ‘2008 after successfully unloading of crude oil from a vessel named Jawaharlal Nehru. The Rs 1420 crore project had designed for a capacity of transportation of 11 million tonnes of crude oil per year.

The pipeline project consisted of installation of OLE_LINK2OLE_LINK1- SPM facilities at Paradip port, laying of 48 inch Diameter and 20 km long pipeline from SPM to the shore tank farm, construction of a tank-farm at Paradip and laying of a 30 inch diameter and 330 km long crude oil pipeline to connect IndianOil's existing Haldia-Barauni Crude Oil Pipeline at Haldia.

Frequent defunct of SPM has been severely affected the transportation of crude oil in which IOCL would fail its target for said cause. Experts including engineers have opined that SPM system could not sustain properly in Bay of Bengal due to behavioral change of sea and rough weather. Though its design had made by examining the current speed of sea and wind speed but SPM systems are not working properly during rough weather and cyclonic weather. This has resulted frequent defunct of SPM due to sea rough on many occasions in Paradip.

As SPM systems is functioning properly in Gujarat and other ports properly due to calm of sea but systems is not functioning here due sea rough. Similarly, they have suspected about improper design of SPM by the then experts by examining sea behavior and current speed & wind speed of sea causing defunct of SPM. Other reason of defunct of SPM is improper maintenance, lack of technical expert for its supervision.

SPM system has been defunct in Paradip since three weeks but nothing has been improved for its function so it may reduce the cargo operation of PPT. Meanwhile, IOCL pressed underwater divers and technical experts to operate it but they failed to operate it due to rough sea and tidal wave.

IOCL sources said that vessels carrying 2.08 million tones crude oil can unload it through SPM system in which nearly four big vessels are being berthed at SPM in every month but single vessel has not yet berthed in this month due to defunct of SPM. IOCL has now the stock of 11 million tones of crude oil but problem would arise if SPM would not function within one month.

Besides this, the hope of IOCL is to set up 2nd SPM at Paradip for handling of their Very Large Crude Carriers [VLCCs] to add about 15 Million tons of cargo to the present volume by March, 2012 may be a distant dream for said reason.

Chief Manager (operation), IOCL Mr S.S.Sawant has informed that SPM system has not been functioning from last 12th August so IOCL has taken alternative arrangement to mitigate crude oil transportation from Kakinada and Visakhapatana ports to Haldia refinery. He said expert teams have been pressed into service to operate Paradip SPM within 7 to 8 days. – He added.