BY News Agency
The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) on Tuesday inaugurated four petrol storage tanks at Monsinmi depot in Ogun state to ease product distribution and operational constraints.
Inaugurating the project, Maikanti Baru, NNPC’s group managing director, said the dismantling and reconstruction of the tanks were relevant to restore strategic oil and gas infrastructure.
According to him, Mosinmi depot was been constructed in 1978 for storage and distribution of petroleum products to the western part of the country.
“Unfortunately, Tank 13 was gutted by fire in 1997 while Tank 11, 12 and 22 have been in service for 23 years but their respective floating roofs collapsed at different times in 2001 and rendered them unserviceable,” he said.
“Non-usage of these decrepit tanks imposed operational constraint to product storage and distribution in the Mosinmi area in turn negatively impacted the turn-around to some product vessels at Atlas Cove jetty with concomitant huge demurrage charges to NNPC.”
He said the reconstruction and rehabilitation of the tanks became necessary to restore the operational capacity of Mosinmi depot and ease product distribution in the west.
Baru said the reconstruction and rehabilitation of the tanks were completed by Adano Engineering Company in September 2011 in line with the contract agreement.
He said the project was completed on schedule in spite of the challenges posed by community restiveness, change in tariff by Nigerian Customs Service with resultant unforeseen delays and increases in duties.
“The project has come to restore the original combined storage of 87.70 million litres for the four tanks, which has also increased by 220,000 litres,” he said.
“This combined storage capacity represents over 54 per cent of the total storage capacity for petrol at Mosinmi depot and has significantly enhanced storage capacity nationwide.”
Farouk Sa’id, group general manger, engineering and technology division, NNPC, said that the project was awarded to indigenous local engineering and was satisfactorily completed.
Sa’id lauded federal government’s initiative towards empowering indigenous companies to strive in the engineering, oil and gas industry.
He said the project was supervised and it met the required best industry standard, adding that products would be loaded through automated machine.
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