Page 11 - DMEA Week 49 2022

DMEA PIPELINES DMEA

He added: “That is just the innovation and we terminals – namely, the Brass and Bonny facil-
layered it on a technology – Command and ities, both of which have been shut down fol-
Control Centre … Today, we have end-to-end lowing declarations of force majeure by their
visibility: We are able to detect, we are able to operators – to come back on stream as anti-theft
deter and we are able to respond. We are still operations continued. “Forcados is back. Bonny
making a lot of improvement and that’s what you will soon be back,” he stated.
call the 3DR: we first detect, we deactivate, and In the meantime, he said, security forces have
we destroy and then we remove.” destroyed about 638 of the 763 known illegal
Before the most recent initiatives, Wunti oil-refining facilities and will continue working
said, Nigeria was losing more than 700,000 bpd to curb theft. Wunti cautioned, though, that the
to theft, engineering losses and shutdowns. This sector’s problems were pervasive and would take
has caused the country to miss its OPEC pro- time to identify and disable all of the facilities
duction quotas and has also had negative eco- used to divert oil and petroleum products.
nomic effects, he remarked. “We have incapacitated almost about 70%
“If you take an average oil price of $90 [per of what we have identified, and we will keep
barrel], that will translate to somewhere in the identifying some of them,” he told Arise TV.
neighbourhood of $1.9bn [in] losses that we suf- “It is mind-boggling what we discovered even
fered,” he told Arise TV. as operators and every one of us saw the kind
of sophistication, where illegal connections are
Anti-theft campaign put on every major trunk line, including direct
Wunti went on to say that he expected additional export lines on Forcados.”. ™

TERMINALS & TRANSPORT
IOTC says it is working to maintain Iran’s

crude oil export infrastructure

MIDDLE EAST IRANIAN Oil Terminals Co. (IOTC) has said
that it is working to maintain the country’s oil
export infrastructure with a view to increasing
crude and product sales. Meanwhile, an Iranian
tanker has arrived in Venezuela carrying 2mn
barrels of ultra-light crude oil.
IOTC managing director Abbas Asadruz was
quoted by Ministry of Petroleum (MoP) news
outlet Shana as saying that his company is taking
all the necessary measures to keep the country’s
oil terminals maintained and up-to-date.
Speaking during a visit to Kharg Island Oil
Terminal, Asadruz emphasised the necessity
and significance of maintaining and modern-
ising Iran’s oil infrastructure, including storage
tanks, pipelines and export docks.
“IOTC as a technical, operational and spe- Kharg Island is home to the largest of Iran’s four oil terminals (Image: IOTC)
cialised company in charge of crude oil and gas
condensate export operations must have the to first pass through the Strait of Hormuz. The
necessary capabilities to carry out the assigned terminal is the end point of the Goreh-Jask
missions in the best possible way,” he said. Crude Oil Transfer Project and will also feature
Iran has four oil terminals, the largest of an initial 20 storage tanks with a total storage
which is Kharg Island, through which around capacity of 10mn barrels of crude, with storage
90% of its exports currently flow, as well as capacity eventually rising over a further two
the major Assalouyeh gas hub. Kharg Island is phases to 30mn barrels. It has been designed to
understood to be capable of loading 7-8mn bar- handle exports of heavy and light crude grades
rels per day (bpd) of crude. as well as condensates.
In mid-2021, the first 350,000 bpd sin- Two further SPMs with associated pipelines
gle-point mooring (SPM) was installed at the and metering facilities will expand the port’s
Jask Oil Terminal, a facility offering Iran direct export capacity to at least 1mn bpd as the Goreh-
export access to the Sea of Oman without having Jask pipeline’s capacity rises to that level.

Week 49 08•December•2022 www. NEWSBASE .com P11