By Godwin ORITSE

THE tripartite agreement between Pinnacle Oil and Gas Limited, the Lekki Free Trade Zone (LFTZC) Company and the China Petroleum Technology and Development Corporation (CPTDC) to form a synergy with a view to building the first private Single Mooring Buoy (SMB) is a development that will revolutionise the freighting of petroleum products.

The Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) entered into the parties will enable vessels carrying petroleum products to anchor and discharge their content via the network of undersea and onshore pipelines to respective tanks.

The N39billion SMB facility project off shore Lagos bridge the oil and Gas downstream supply chain and reduce the landing cost of refined petroleum products.

A buoy is a type of an object that floats in water and is used in the middle of the seas as locators or as warning points for the ships and they are generally bright (fluorescent) in colour.

Mooring buoys are a type of buoy, to which, ships can be moored in the deep oceanic areas. A mooring buoy weighs more than the general type of buoys. The use of a mooring buoy means a vessel does not risk snagging underwater cables or other bottom obstructions.

Moored vessels also avoid damaging sensitive underwater habitats, such as coral reefs, by dragging a heavy anchor on the bottom while anchoring.

While a Single-Point Mooring (SPM) is a loading anchored offshore that serves as a mooring point and interconnect for tankers loading or offloading gas or liquid products. SPMs are the link between geostatic subsea manifold connections and weathervaning tankers.

They are capable of handling any size ship, even Very Large Crude Carriers (VLCC) where no alternative facility is available.

Under the MOU to be executed to by Lekki Free Trade Zone Company limited and Pinnacle Oil and Gas and their Chinese counterpart, the Oil and Gas firm is also expected to complete the $250million SMB facility with over 11 kilometres of seabed and on shore pipeline network by December 2013 when many of the tank farm proposed for the zone would have also been completed.

The SMB project could not have come at a better time than now that the government is withdrawing subsidy on petrol and considering the factors that impact on the product pricing like demurrage, and littering of cargo by using smaller vessel to take product from mother vessel that cannot berth at the jetties because of the draught that would be eliminated therefore reducing the landing cost of petroleum products quite considerable.

Besides, the location of Lekki axis of Lagos to site the SMB facility is the most suitable considering the congestion and environment hazards posed by the proliferation of petroleum products at the tank farms in and around the Apapa and Kirikiri area of Lagos.

The Lekki is also suitable because it is on the outskirts of Lagos and the proximity to Ijebu Ode from where most trucks come to load products.

The presence of the SMB facility will also enhance the status of the LFTZ as a major economic catalyst for the growth of the national economy.