The facility, which would be launched by the president on Saturday, 22nd of October, 2022, will revolutionise the downstream sector of the oil and gas industry. The project was conceptualised to revolutionise the Nigerian downstream oil and gas industry by enabling the direct delivery of petroleum products from large vessels, which would otherwise have been unable to berth anywhere on the Nigerian coastline.
Speaking to the journalists yesterday, ahead of the grand opening ceremony in Lagos, the group chief executive officer (CEO) of Pinnacle Oil And Gas Limited, Dr. Peter Mbah, said, the asset will improve the efficiency of the Nigerian downstream industry by eliminating the need for expensive vessel lightering, reduces the incidence of demurrage for visiting mother vessels, among other advantages.
According to Mbah, “all of these have resulted in significant savings for vessels berthing at the Terminal as opposed to berthing at any of the other mooring facilities in the Lagos area.
“The facility currently comprises: 300 million Litres of Refined Petroleum Products storage comprising storage for Petrol or Premium Motor Spirit (PMS) as well as Diesel or Automotive Gas Oil (AGO); Conventional Buoy Mooring (CBM) Facility with 2Nos. 16inch 8km of subsea products pipeline network with a combined discharge flowrate of 1800m3/hr; and a Single Point Mooring (SPM) facility with 2Nos. 24inch 10km of subsea products pipeline network with combined discharge flowrate of 4,000m3/hr Pumps/loading gantries systems with ability to truck out 20millionlts/day.”
The CBM, which includes 4 individual buoys as well as a power buoy, he said, is located in 16m water depth, and is connected to the shore storage with 2 x 16in lines, and a discharge capacity of up to 1,800 cubic metres per hour (1800m3/hr).
Stressing that the facility can berth tankers of up to 60,000 Dead Weight Tons (DWT)(80, 460,000lts), he added that, the SPM, on the other hand, is a single buoy system (as the name implies) located in 20m of water depth with capacity to moor full sized tanker vessels of up to 90,000 DWT(120,000,000lts).
“The mooring is connected to the storage via 2 x 24-inch lines with a discharge capacity of up to 4,200 cubic meters per hour. Both moorings are class certified by the American Bureau of Shipping (ABS) and are adequately equipped with modern functionalities like power, lightings as well as electro-mechanical controls via an umbilical system,” he explained
The project, which required investments of over $1 billion, is the initial phase of the complete project which will ultimately increase to about 1 billion litres in storage capacity, with an ultra-modern Liquified Petroleum Gas (LPG) Terminal to facilitate import and export of LPG, he pointed out.
In addition, as part of the planned expansion in the medium term, he said, the facility will be expanded to store additional products apart from PMS and AGO such as Jet fuel or Aviation turbine Kerosene (ATK) and other classes of kerosene.
Disclosing that the facility will also be upscaled to incorporate fuel blending capabilities which will enable the facility blend and export different specifications of products for other markets in the African West Coast, he added that, the facility was built to the highest technical (DNV, API, NFPA & ISO) standards, incorporating among others; a Terminal Automation System with real time control and monitoring of product inventory management, real-time reconciliations, HMI display, loading and offloading product control, access control, emergency shutdown systems, among others.
PMS tanks, he stressed, was built with Internal floating roofs to reduce evaporation losses and safeguard the environment.
“The facility has a modern Pipeline End Terminal or (PLET) equipped with tie-in points which permits the connection of multiple third-party tank farms to the offshore moorings, sufficient truck gantries able to load up to 20 Million litres of products daily, ability to discharge 2vessels of combine 150,000dwt (200,000,000lts) within 48hours simultaneously, ability to backload 37,500dwt (50,000,000lts) within 24hours, 24/7 seamless inter tank transfer system, and so on,” he pointed out