July 3, 2023
DHAKA – A 110km pipeline to transport crude oil and diesel from a deep-sea mooring, 16km off the Maheshkhali coast, to Eastern Refinery Ltd in Chattogram’s Patenga has been commissioned yesterday.
After trial runs, the pipeline was commissioned at 9:00pm, said Md Lokman, Managing Director of Eastern Refinery Limited (ERF).
“We were able to connect the Single Point Mooring (SPM), the floating station of the pipeline, with the MT Horai ship, which has carried 82,000 tons of crude oil from Saudi Arabi, around 4:00pm, Md Lokman said.
With the commissioning of the country’s first undersea pipeline, lighter vessels will no longer be required to unload petroleum products from large tankers and carry those to the refinery. This will save time and about Tk 800 crore a year, according to Bangladesh Petroleum Corporation.
Under the Single Point Mooring (SPM) project, two parallel pipelines have been installed — one for crude oil and the other for diesel.
Md Lokman says the pipeline will cut transportation time by 8 days. It will also not affect unloading oil in bad weather.
According to the BPC, the pipes from the storage facility to the Eastern Refinery are 18 inches in diameter. About 65km of these are under the sea.
BPC, with the funding of the Exim Bank of China, has implemented the project at a cost of Tk 7,124 crore.