Expansion projects for oil storage on-going at Port of Fujairah

Oil storage capacity just outside the Strait of Hormuz is important for companies that ship fuel to Asia, especially after Iran last year threatened to block the world’s most important oil shipping route.
The Port of Fujairah in the United Arab Emirates opened a pipeline last year that will allow Abu Dhabi crude to be exported without having to sail through Hormuz.
Plans at the port include petrochemical facilities, floating LNG terminals and even grain silos. Firms provided updates this week at a Fujairah bunkering and oil forum.
At the Port of Fujairah, oil storage capacity reached just under 5 million cubic meters (mcm) in 2012. It is expected to double before 2016. Vopak Horizon Fujairah Limited (VHFL), a joint venture between Netherlands-based Royal Vopak, Dubai’s Emirates National Oil Company (ENOC), the government of Fujairah, and Kuwait’s Independent Petroleum Group, added 600,000 cubic meters of capacity last May.
Azeri national oil company Socar’s trading arm plans to build 641,000 cubic meters of storage capacity in a joint-venture with Swiss trading house Aurora Progress and the government of Fujairah. It will consist of 20 tanks for clean and dirty products. The first phase with 114,000 cubic meters came online in March 2012 and the second phase with 232,000 cubic meters is due to come online later in 2013 and will include clean tanks.
Another nearby port could be a key player in oil transportation in the region. Sohar, a deep-sea port in the Sultanate of Oman, is managed by the Sohar Industrial Port Company, a joint venture between the government of Oman and the Dutch port of Rotterdam. It has 1.285 mcm of oil storage, all allocated for clean products and all currently leased out and full, trade sources said. Sohar is also home to a 116,000-barrel-per-day refinery, whose capacity Oman wants to boost by some 50,000-60,000 bpd by 2016. Traders say there is also additional storage at the refinery.
(March 27, 2013)