Pinnacle’s petroleum offtake facility: First off-shore petroleum terminal in Lekki, at a glance
It was also established to enable the direct delivery of petroleum products from large vessels which would otherwise have been unable to berth all the various coastlines across Nigeria.
The facility was dedicated to eliminating the need for expensive vessel lightering and sub-optmisation issues in Nigeria’s downstream sector, reducing multiple handlings in receiving products from mother vessels using daughter vessels often leading to demurrage, reducing about N5 billion daily loss in revenues due to the lightering operations typically associated with Apapa Port.
The facility currently has a Conventional Buoy Mooring (CBM) Facility with 16km of 16inch subsea products pipeline network, and loading gantries system with the ability to truck out 20 million litres per day.
The facility has the capacity to enable the emptying of mother vessels within just two days, instead of the 32 days required to do a minimum shuttling in the Apapa terminal.
The shore tank farm is currently able to handle up to 300 million litres of Premium Motor Spirit (PMS) as well as diesel or Automotive Gas Oil (AGO), and the facility is designed to permit rapid discharge into trucks for evacuation at a rate of up to 20 million litres per day.
In a video message at the inauguration of the facility at the Free Trade Zone in Lekki, Lagos on Saturday, President Muhammadu Buhari said that the traffic congestion created by petroleum product trucks in the Apapa area of Lagos state was a major challenge faced by his administration in the last seven years.
The President described the investment as a demonstration of the success of his administration’s agenda to transform the nation’s economy, adding that the government looks forward to many more investments of this magnitude.
The President said, “Production of multiple energy streams is one of the major goals of this administration, and we have identified that the congestion at Apapa Road is such that it has been hampering major development in the country.
“Therefore, the birth of the Pinnacle Petroleum product terminal will not only add to our sources of energy, it will also ease traffic congestion at Apapa, thereby increasing development and opportunities in and around the facility.”
He said, “The Lekki FTZ is Nigeria’s most active and vibrant Free Trade Zone, and it embodies what Lagos represents. Which is vision, commitment, and an enduring spirit of excellence; this is what we have always stood for.
He described the Pinnacle facility as another milestone achievement in the history and strategic development of Nigeria’s Oil and Gas Industry while assuring all stakeholders that the NMDPRA was committed to boosting private investment, enhancing the ease of doing business thereby leading to job creation, economic growth and development of the country.
He said, “The Pinnacle Lekki petroleum products Terminal is an ultra-modern purpose-built petroleum products intake, offtake, and storage facility that has in effect improved the efficiency of the Nigerian downstream industry by eliminating the need for expensive vessel lightering, reducing the incidence of demurrage for visiting mother vessels, reducing the typical out turn losses which typically occur during lightering operations etc.
“All of these have resulted in significant savings for vessels berthing at the Terminal as opposed to berthing at any of the other mooring facilities in the Lagos area,” the ACE said.
Mr. Peter Mba, Chief Executive Officer of Pinnacle Oil and Gas Limited, in his statement at the launch of the facility said that the conventional operations of moving petroleum products from ships to tank farms were suboptimal involving a lot of multiple handling.
He said, “The procedures have been very inefficient, bringing in cargoes in large tankers, keeping that large tanker in the middle of the sea, and then going with shuttle vessels to lighter (tranship) from the large tanker because we couldn’t take the large tanker to the port due to shallow draft restriction.
“With the new infrastructure, the operation now takes just two days, because you just connect the mother vessel to our terminals directly.
“So it reduces the demurrage cost the industry was incurring on the mother vessel and the cost of hiring the shuttle vessel,” Mba said.
The PINNACLE CEO however noted that the terminal is supported by the world-class services of the Lekki Free Zone Development Company in areas of services like power supply and truck traffic management.
