Chemoil Energy sees one-year delay for storage facility

Singapore-based Chemoil Energy Ltd. sees its 600,000 cubic meters (cu m) bunker oil storage facility in the eastern emirate of Fujairah being completed in 2011, one year behind the original schedule, bringing the total capacity of its terminal to 700,000 cu m. Adrian Tolson, Chemoil vice-president of sales and marketing said that around 75% of the storage capacity was to be set aside for dark fuel, potentially including some crude storage, while the remaining 25% would be earmarked for clean petroleum products. “We will start construction in the next month or two, right now we are finding contractors–hopefully we’ll be operational by mid-2011,” he added, saying that “the amount of interest there is for tank storage in this region, and a lot of it is being done for strategic reasons for crude oil storage, I’d have to believe there is going to be a lot of commercial crude trading going on in this area, in the future.” Chemoil was initially aiming to complete the facility by 2010, in time for the IPIC-developed crude pipeline to Fujairah from Abu Dhabi, although the death of Chemoil’s founding chairman Robert Chandran in a helicopter accident in Indonesia last year sidetracked and delayed its projects significantly, together with the growing market uncertainty. (March 25, 2009)