According to Pinnacle Oil and Gas Limited, their $1 billion project, which will be opened by President Muhammadu Buhari on Saturday, would solve the ongoing traffic jams brought about by Apapa port’s inefficiencies.
In fact, the nation loses over N5 billion per day as a result of the gridlock at the Apapa port, which makes it difficult for the federal government to collect excise taxes and prevents the evacuation of dry goods from the port.
In addition, because of port congestion, ships going for Nigeria would have to pay ten times more in freight because they must spend days in the nation’s waterways.
The offshore intake facility would aid in the free movement of dry goods, according to the Chief Executive Officer, Dr. Peter Mbah. He noted that vessels that would often have to wait months to berth at the ports will be decreased.
“This will go a long way to impact the freight cost. The earnings of the federal government will also be enhanced because of the fast movement of cargo. Our facility would also ensure that there is a quick turnaround time for businesses. What typically you should have done in 32 days, would be reduced to 48 hours. So, there are both socioeconomic and business challenges that this project would address,” he added.
The Pinnacle CEO continued by describing the facility as a two-offshore intake facility with a single point mooring (SPM) at a water depth of 23 meters and two cargo pipelines with a diameter of 24 inches, and a conventional buoy mooring (CBM) at a water depth of 17 meters and two cargo pipelines with a diameter of 16 inches.
He went on to say that the facility would handle various handlings of petroleum products from sea to shore, noting that its SPM and CPM allow oil and gas operators to take mother vessels to open sea where there is sufficient depth for mother vessels to discharge from the sea to an onshore terminal with storage facilities.
“Currently, the way the operations in the downstream work is that you have these large vessels. Those large vessels would not be able to go to the ports because of the draft restrictions, because the water channel is not deep enough for those big vessels to go to our ports where you have the storage terminals. What typically happens is that those big vessels which we refer to as mother vessels, sit at the anchorage, wait there and then we go with smaller vessels, which we refer to as daughter vessels, and we go and lighter the mother vessels.
“A typical mother vessel would have a volume of between 80 and 120 million litres and a typical shuttle vessel would do between 15 and 20 million litres. So, for a mother vessel of 80 million litres, the shuttle vessel would need to do a minimum of four voyages, and for each voyage, it takes an average of eight days to move from the port, go to the mother vessel, load 20 million litres and go back to the terminal and discharge. That operation takes eight days to do. So what that has done is, those typical voyages you do that take you eight days and you have to do it four times to empty 80 million litres of product, which takes you two days. In 48 hours, you take that vessel to a Pinnacle terminal, you are done discharging,” he added.
According to him, the company has provided an effective discharge facility, enabling it to do tasks that ordinarily take the sector 32 days to complete in just two days, outpacing its rivals in terms of turnaround time.
He continued, bragging that Pinnacle is the largest in terms of volume deliveries to businesses and marketers, and that Pinnacle is the market leader in the B2B arena.
