Vopak Horizon Fujairah yesterday inaugurated a set of pipelines that connect oil product storage tanks to extra berths at the port. That allows the joint venture of a Dutch company and Emirates National Oil Company to offload products onto 11 tankers at once, four more than by just using its on-site jetty.
"This project was really for us to connect to the port to give us more flexibility to use the infrastructure in the port," said Yusr Hussain Sultan Al Junaidy, the chief executive of Horizon Terminals, the oil products storage company that Emirates National Oil Company owns.
The pipeline connection is the latest development along Fujairah's rapidly expanding coastline, where construction cranes and hard hats line a narrow stretch of land between the mountains and the sea.
By the end of the year, Fujairah will be home to 7 million to 8 million cubic feet of oil products storage, and is on track to reach 9 to 10 million cubic feet in the next three years, according to Captain Mousa Murad, the general manager of the Port of Fujairah.
Part of that expansion is expected to be taken on by Vopak Horizon Fujairah, which has 2.1 million cubic feet of oil products storage capacity and is targeting a capacity expansion to 4 million cubic feet. That could include crude oil, said Cees De Greve, the general manager of Vopak Horizon Fujairah.
The construction of the three-kilometre-long pipeline connection was the first project on the port's reclaimed land.
The pipelines allow Vopak Horizon to load up tankers at the port with petroleum products and clean fuel. It also gives the company some breathing room when its own berths are out of commission; yesterday two of the seven berths were out of service.
-
Company DirectoryFreight RateExport RateAgency PartnershipCargo Leads