150,000 DWT oil tanker accesses Dungquat SPM

According to news released by PVN, on 23^rd August 2014, Binh Son Refining and Petrochemical Company Limited (BSR) successfully received crude oil tanker of 150,000 DWT to import 1 million barrels of AZERI crude oil from Azerbaijan through the Single Point Mooring (SPM) system of Dung Quat Oil Refinery. This is the biggest first-ever oil tanker accessing this facility after 5 years of operation; in the past, only tankers of up to 110,000 DWT could visit here.

During the 2^nd overall maintenance of the refinery which lasted 57 days, nearly 7,000 items were done with the involvement of 3,400 professional staffs of BSR, contractors, partners. It was divided into 5 main packages, notably the the package 4 was implemented by BSR themselves including the maintenance of rotating equipment, electrical equipment, automation equipment, a number of simple static devices and oil pipelines. Meanwhile, the repair of defects for thermal expansion joints EX-101 in RFCC workshop was conducted by Technip/JGC contractor (EPC contractor of Dung Quat Oil Refinery Plant) and connection of awaiting ends for SRU 2 project was implemented by JGC contractor.

The first 150,000 DWT Oil Tanker at Dungquat SPM. Photo courtesy: PVN

Following the successful maintenance and upgrading of single-point mooring buoy, BSR imported the first crude oil from tanker of 150,000 DWT instead of 110,000 DWT previously. At transformation cost of US$ 300,000 only, SPM system has been improved to receive crude oil vessels of double capacity from Aframax vessel size (80,000 - 110,000 DWT) to Suezmax vessel size (150,000 DWT). Currently, BSR is capable of receiving crude oil from different regions of the world such as West Africa, the Mediterranean ... to help diversify sources of crude oil for processing at Dung Quat Oil Refinery, improving efficiency, reducing production costs and saving USD 10-15 million .

It was the 398^th crude oil vessel received BSR through this SPM since the plant was put into operation in 2009, with totally 31,288,140 million tons of crude oil handled, approximately 27,985,737 tons of products refined.