MOHESHKHALI, COX'S BAZAR, July 21, 2023 (BSS) - Bangladesh is going to enter the new era of unloading imported petroleum oil from ships to storage house as the Installation of Single Point Mooring (SPM) project is expected to begin its operation by this year.

The SPM will make the country's energy management system more economical, sustainable and environment friendly.

"The SPM project will be commissioned by this year as 95 percent of its works have already been completed. Separate test run of the project have already been done to this end," project officer Monjed Ali Shanto said.

While briefing reporters at the site of the SPM project, he said that it will take only 48 hours to offload the imported petroleum oil which earlier required 11 to 12 days following the conventional way.

No lighterage would be required to carry fuel from mother vessels (big ships), which is now moored at the outer quay, after implementation of the project, he said.

The SPM was built on over 90 acres of land under a G2G project of Bangladesh and China at a cost of Taka 8341 crore at Maheshkhali Upazila in Cox's Bazar, he said.

"Once the SPM goes into operation, around Taka 800 crore will be saved annually by cutting carrying cost of petroleum products from outer anchorage to fuel tanks," he said, adding that it will also save time.

Officials familiar with the process said three tanks having storage capacity of 1.80 lakh kilolitre crude oils and three tanks with 1.08 lakh kilolitre furnished oil will be used in the process.

A 15-kilomtre long pipeline has already been installed from land up to deep sea to directly unload imported petroleum oil to the SPM, officials said.

"It is impossible to offload petroleum oil through literage operation using the current infrastructure and the process is very time consuming, expensive, and risky," he said.

 The SPM has the capacity of unloading 9 million metric ton every year.

A 120-kilometre pipeline was also built from the SPM project to Eastern Refinary Limited (EFL) to treat the crude oil.

The SPM has the storage capacity of 45,000 metric tons crude oils.

As part of the project work, approximately 135 kilometer (km) offshore pipeline and 58-km onshore pipeline have already been installed.

During a visit at the project site, the correspondent has found that the SPM project is almost complete as the six storage tanks have already been installed.

Of the six, three tanks -- with 60,000 kilolitre capacity each-- will be able to store crude oil and the rest with 36,000 kilolitre capacity each will be able to store diesel.

The Netherlands-based Blue Water completed the construction of SPM 'Boya' which is awaiting shipment to the project site.

The China Petroleum Pipeline Engineering Co Ltd. is currently building the country's maiden SPM system.

The BPC currently pays $5.50 per ton to lighterage or small vessels, owned mainly by the Bangladesh Shipping Corporation, to ferry petroleum to its onshore tanks from larger mother vessels.

The SPM project will save the cost of the BPC.

Bangladesh annually imports around 6.0-million tonnes of crude and refined oil 1.3-million tones. The remaining ones are crude oil and refined petro products.