Mangalore Refinery Petrochemicals Limited is to be commissioned in early September; it is Single Point Mooring (SPM) facility. An SPM, a loading buoy stationed offshore, interconnects, as a mooring point, ships that load and unload crude oil. The greatest advantage is it can handle ships of any size. As it is, New Mangalore Port cannot take in ships of more than 85,000 tonnes during monsoon on account of low draft. Once the commissioning of MRPL is over, it can receive Very Large Crude Carriers (VLCC). The Managing Director, MRPL, Mr.P.P.Upadhya said: “Operation and maintenance contract is already in place for SPM. We are trying to commission it by August end or by first half of September”. The SPM, being in the limits of New Mangalore Port Trust and within 16 kilometes at sea, would give a draft of 30 million for VLCC. Mr.P.Tamilvanan, Chairman of the Port Trust hoped that the SPM facility would be useful in bringing more traffic to the port. Mr. Upadhya pointed out that the SRM facility would also provide flexibility to receive opportunity crude oil which is high sulphur and high acidic with a lower value than that of the normal oil, from the West African and Latin American countries. It must be noted here that without crude oil storage facilities in the underground caverns, the commissioning of an SPM would not command full benefit of the facility. MRPL hopes that such facilities with Indian Strategic Petroleum Reserve Limited in Mangalore will be available for operation by 2013-14. MRPL needs cavern capacity of 0.3 million tonnes since a VLCC generally carries so much crude oil.
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