The Nigerian Petroleum Regulatory Authority (NMDPRA) is convinced that the approach channels and the berth areas need to be dredged enough to allow enough draft for larger vessels to berth at the various oil platforms.
Mr Ogbugo Ukoha, the NMDPRA Executive for Distribution systems, Storage & Retail infrastructure was on a facility tour of depot’s Tank Farms and Jettys’ belonging to Oil and Gas companies at the Calabar Port. Ukoha was on a mission to interact with the stakeholders and understand the challenges they were facing. The stakeholders in the industry were keen to address their issues before the authority expecting redressal. The visit started off in Lagos, Warri and ended in Calabar. Part of our mandate under the PIA was to identify and put up issues for rectification with the government and to study opportunities and to enable exponential growth in the market.
The industry players raised =concerns including the draft of the channel which is about 8.5 meters in the jetty area, and they have to rely on the tide to come high before bringing in larger vessels. This limits the kinds of vessels that call at the jetties. If the channel can be dredged and deepened, bigger vessels can call in which will enable more logistical volumes easing transportation and lessening costs and thereby become more attractive to buyers.
Considering the storage capacity in Calabar if the draft can be increased, the potential too can be increased and to achieve more volumes, dredging is the only solution. The industry players echoed this view.
The same applies with Warri where at times up to 17 vessels queue up because the draft is quite low.
The Executive visited different facilities in Calabar including Jetties and Depots of Dozzy Oil and Gas, Ammasco Petrochemicals Company, Hyde tanks and Terminals, Dozzy jetty, Sobaz, Jezco Oil Nigeria Ltd ,Alkanes petroleum &Gas amongst others.
