CHATTOGRAM, Jan 15: The Bangladesh Shipping Corporation (BSC) is going to add three oil product carriers to its fleet by March.
The BSC has only two over-aged crude-oil lightering vessels.
The first oil product carrier will be delivered to the state-owned shipping corporation on Friday in China. It is procured under a development plan with the full funding of the Chinese government under a foreign loan agreement scheme.
A team of operational experts and crew are now in China while another team headed by Director (technical) of the BSC and Project Director Md Yusuf will fly to China tomorrow to take delivery of the tanker.
He will be accompanied by a few senior officials of the Ministry of Shipping on behalf of the government of Bangladesh.
Sources in the BSC said delivery of three oil product carriers would be made in phases, the first one on Friday, the second one in mid-February and the last one in mid-March.
All the vessels will be delivered from the New Yangzi Shipyard of China.
Under the Chinese government funding, the BSC received three bulk carriers of 39,000 DWT (dead weight tonnage) capacity each -- MV Banglar Joyjatra, MV Banglar Samriddhi and MV Banglar Arjan -- in the second half of 2018.
The oil product carriers - MT Banglar Agrajatra (to be delivered on Friday), MT Banglar Agradoot and MT Banglar Agragoti -- each having 39,300 DWT capacity -- are being added to the BSC fleet after long 32 years, the authority said.
Until first half of the last calendar year, the public sea-borne cargo transporting company had only two age-old oil tankers -- MT Banglar Jyoti and MT Banglar Sourav -- built by Denmark in 1987 and procured in the same year, were engaged in crude oil lightering on a limited scale.
The BSC disposed of more than six age-old vessels over the last two years with an eye to equip the fleet of vessels with new and modern ones.
Managing Director of the BSC Commodore Yahya Syed said the old oil tankers exceeded 30 years in service and needed to be replaced.
"We will procure a new mother tanker with the BSC's own funding," he added.
He said the under-construction Single Point Mooring (SPM) with Double Pipeline, the second unit of Eastern Refinery Ltd (ERL), was nearing completion.
"So we don't need any lightering tanker. We have rather undertaken the project of procuring a mother tanker of 100,000 to 125,000 tonnes of capacity," he said.
With the commissioning of the Single Point Mooring, the Eastern Refinery Ltd's crude oil refining capacity will double by 2020.
He said the three bulk carriers and three oil product carriers would cost an accumulated amount of Tk 14.30 billion with full Chinese loan support.
Commodore Yahya said the BSC would introduce a feeder service very soon between Chittagong Port and Colombo Port of Sri Lanka as well as other BIMSTEC countries.
Commodore Syed said the national flag carrier also planned to add two LNG (liquefied natural gas) transportation vessels, both of 140,000 cubic metres of capacity, for carrying the LNG imported by the government to meet the country's gas demand.
The BSC MD said his organisation undertook another massive project to procure six mother bulk carriers of 80, 000 tonnes of capacity each and another 10 bulk carriers of 10-15 thousand tonnes of capacity each for lightering imported coal from mother vessels and bulk carriers.
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