Pengerang : A savvy MB and a visionary dreamer

OutSyed the Box Tuesday, May 15, 2012

OutSyed the Box

Singapore only has 18 metre berths – a drawback to attract ULCCs. This is where Pengerang makes the difference.

Petronas has announced that they will be setting up an 300,000 barrels per day capacity refinery at the Pengerang Integrated Petroleum Complex. They will also be building two more petrochemical plants whose feedstock will also come from the oil refinery.

It is most likely that a Taiwanese company will also be investing more money to build another 400,000 barrel per day refinery. Plus the tank farm I described yesterday all these projects will take the investments in Pengerang to over RM100.0 billion already.

Petronas’ refinery plus the petrochem plants will make Pengerang the petrochemical and petroleum hub of South East Asia. And we will overtake Singapore in certain products. Its all because of land – they don’t have land.

This entire project in Pengerang is feasible because of one very large ingredient – the deep water berthing at this spot. The water depth is 24 metres which can take in VLCC tankers (Very Large Crude Carriers) as well as ULCC tankers (Ultra Large Crude Carriers). VLCCs are in the 160,000 to 220,000 250,000 ton range whereas ULCCs are in the 320,000 – 550,000 tons range, floating steel mammoths. Here is a picture of an ULCC tanker which weighs 441,000 tons and is 1,247 feet long. This is a monster.

Read more HERE.