Petroleum Engineering and Development Co. (PEDEC), a subsidiary of the National Iranian Oil Company, Petro Omid Asia Company and Omid Investment Management Group signed a contract on Sunday to build crude oil storage facilities near the southeastern port of Jask in Hormozgan Province.
According to the NIOC news portal, Ali Kardor, CEO of the state-owned company, and Gholamreza Manouchehri, deputy for development and engineering at NIOC, and the first deputy oil minister, Marzieh Shahdaei were present at the signing ceremony in Tehran.
The contract, signed by Touraj Dehghani, PEDEC managing director, Asghar Gorzin, head of POAC CEO, and Ahmad Ebrahimi, the head of OIMG, envisages building 20 storage tanks with a total capacity of 10 million barrels on a build-operate-transfer (BOT) basis.
According to the news agency, the investment to complete the two-phase venture in three years is estimated at 606 million euros, of which 200 million euros will be expended during the first phase.
"The storage tanks are planned to hold 10 million barrels in the first phase, which could increase up to 30 million later," Kardor said, adding that the plan calls for laying 1,000 kilometers of a 42-inch pipeline from the city of Goureh (Bushehr Province) to the port of Jask.
Upon completion of the pipeline project, close to one million barrels of heavy crude can be transferred from Goureh to Jask, making it the second largest oil export terminal after Kharg in the Persian Gulf.
According to the official, laying the pipeline and building the storage facilities are key elements of the plan to expand the key Jask Oil Terminal.
> $2 Billion Expansion Plan
The terminal is part of a development plan to diversify Iran’s oil export infrastructure. The pipeline project, estimated to cost $2 billion, is expected to be completed by 2021.
"The terminal should ease tanker traffic at Kharg Oil Terminal, which is responsible for more than 90% of Iranian oil exports," Kardor said.
Jask is a strategic hub for a variety of reasons, including its proximity to the Makran Coast stretching along the Sea of Oman. After expansion it will let vessels load crude oil without having to move up to oil terminals in the Persian Gulf.
As a large number of joint hydrocarbon fields are located in the Persian Gulf, the terminal will also help expedite oil storage and export operations.
