The Rompetrol Group N.V. (TRG) is building a floating marine terminal for loading and unloading crude oil 8.7 km off shore from its Petromidia refinery location on the Black Sea Cost near the city of Navodari, known as MMT – Midia Marine Terminal. Maximum handling capacity will be 14 million tons of crude per year. The project is financed from TRG resources at an estimated cost of 90 million USD.
The marine terminal will allow tankers to unload/load cargo through a buoy connected by a submarine pipeline to an onshore pipeline feeding into the storage facility of Petromidia.
This project will shorten the supply chain for crude oil by pipeline from tankers to the refinery by about 33 km, leading to a significant crude transportation cost reduction of at least $3 per ton.
“MMT will become a real hub for imports and exports of crude oil and can swiftly and safely receive and/or dispatch vessels up to the Suezmax size ships or 165,000 DWT of cargo capacity,” said Ermanno Zukar, Project Manager of Vector Energy, TRG’s trading arm. “This project will allow TRG to become a significant component of an alternative crude supply chain starting in the Caspian Sea, leading to TRG’s facility at Petromidia, and ensuring a flow of crude oil further into the European Union when the whole network will be made operative” added Zukar.
The project started in June 2006 and is scheduled for commissioning in September 2008. The Petromidia refinery has a nameplate capacity of 5 million tons per year and is scheduled to reach maximum processing capacity by 2009 as a result of an ongoing debottlenecking program. Excess crude not processed at Petromidia will be traded around the assets of TRG.