Fujairah seeks port expansion investment for oil projects

Land to be reclaimed from navy base to Vopak storage terminal.

Ships line a beach at a port near Fujairah City in 2008. Jeff Topping /The National

Fujairah is seeking investors to extend its port coastline by 500 metres into the sea to make room for new oil projects.
Under a plan that would add another 2.5 million square metres to the emirate's land mass, land would be reclaimed from the navy base to the Vopak oil products storage terminal near the Port of Fujairah, said Captain Mousa Murad, the general manager of Fujairah Port.
That would allow Fujairah to add crude oil and petrochemicals to its energy industry portfolio, which already includes about 7 million cubic feet of downstream oil products storage in massive tanks lining its narrow strip of coast between the mountains and the sea.
The land reclamation master plan, which still requires investors, puts to rest claims that Fujairah's development must come to a halt when it runs out of room.
"They are always telling us: 'Oh, you are over capacity'," said Mr Murad. "This is completely not true. Why am I telling you it's not true? Because today, to have land in Singapore, there is no land available. To have land in Netherlands, it's too expensive. Here, it's cheaper."
Until recently a sleepy fishing town with a side business in container shipping and bunkering, Fujairah has transformed itself in recent years into a hub for the downstream oil trade.
With a pipeline that allows Abu Dhabi oil to bypass the Strait of Hormuz and a refinery and liquefied natural gas import terminal also being developed by the capital, Fujairah hopes to lift its economy.
"Crude tanks still have not come, petrochemical tanks still have not come - we have to make land available," said Mr Murad. "The advantage of this market is the flexibility of the rules and regulations of the UAE."
Petrochemical developments could ride on the output of the refinery, which is being built by Abu Dhabi's International Petroleum Investment Company, the developer of the pipeline.
A year after its opening, the pipeline, which has a capacity of 1.8 million barrels per day, is operating at less than half of its capacity, according to Mr Murad.
Between 700,000 and 800,000 barrels of oil have been flowing to Fujairah every day since June, equivalent to half of the emirate's onshore production.
That means some tankers have been partially loading in Abu Dhabi before arriving at a mooring point in Fujairah to load up.
The Port of Fujairah is also consulting storage owners on whether it should build one or two berths to accommodate very large crude carriers, the mega-sized tankers favoured by the crude industry.
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