New shipping berth for handling liquid fuels opens at the Port of Gdansk
On 26 June, an important event took place at the Port of Gdansk - the first call by a tanker at the newly built T1 berth at the Liquid Fuel Base in the Port of Gdansk, PGA says.
The latest investment by the company Naftoport was completed in December 2014, yet only recently passed the complex technical compliance procedure.
The construction of the new berth at a cost approaching 40 million PLN was an undertaking realised, among others, in view of the nearby PERN oil terminal, but this was not the only reason. The T1 berth is designed to handle petroleum products (fuels) transported by ships with a displacement of up to 50 000 DWT, which will relieve berths P, R and T from servicing these units. This will in turn increase the operational capacities of these berths to handle large oil tankers. This is particularly important as the recurring trend of the last few years in terms of the increase in the transhipment turnover of petroleum products has also been noted in first five months of this year. During this period, the Port of Gdansk handled a total of over 5.5 million tons of crude oil and related products, of which the vast majority were handled at the Naftoport Terminal. It is worth mentioning that this result represents a 13% growth when compared with the same period last year which, for the record, was the third such good year in terms of liquid fuels at the Port of Gdansk over the last decade.
In just a few months, the PERN Oil Terminal will begin operating and will be connected to the Terminal Naftoport bya pipeline system, and therefore we might expect more ships to calls at the Port of Gdansk.
If one were to take into account the estimates of market analysts who predict an increase over the following years in the proportion of oil imported by sea, then the above investment seems to have been a pertinent move, allowing greater flexibility in terms of the ability to handle ships with crude oil and fuels at the Port of Gdansk - a port which, we should remember, has an almost 90-percent share in marine fuel handling in our country.
The Naftoport investment is also a project that fits well with the assumptions included in the "Strategy of development of the Port of Gdansk until 2027," in which a great deal of space is devoted to, among others, boosting the role of the Port of Gdansk as an important Baltic hub for handling containerised cargo and liquid bulk.
