DURATION for offloading Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG) from vessels docking at the Dar es Salaam Port to the Oryx Energies Tanzania’s deport at Kigamboni has now been reduced by 35.5 per cent.
This followed completion of construction of 5.8bn/- gas pipeline stretching to the port’s Kurasini Oil Jetty (KOJ) from the company’s LPG depot in Kigamboni District, Dar es Salaam Region.
Speaking to the journalists over the weekend, Projects Manager for Oryx Energies Tanzania, Eng Joseph Soka, said newly constructed LPG pipeline would now make the duration for offloading the gas from 2500-tonne vessel reduced from 31 hours to 20 hours.
“The project is meant to decrease time of receiving LPG from KOJ at the Dar Port,” he said, noting that the success was due to the fact that the new pipeline has bigger diameter of 10 inches as compared to the old pipeline which has only 6 inch-diameter.
He further detailed that the new pipeline has a length of 2.8 kilometres.
Eng Soka also noted that the pipeline construction was under phase one of the depot’s expansion project.
He added that the company was at initial stages to start phase 2 of the project, which would involve construction of the big tank with capacity of storing 4000 metric tonnes of the LPG.
Currently, the depot has capacity of storing 3,440 metric tonnes of the LPG.
Mr Peter Ndomba, Marketing Manager of the Company, said the expansion project is in line with the government’s agenda that calls for making 80 per cent of Tanzanian population use the clean energy by 2025.
“We want the current number of only 5 per cent of Tanzanians using the clean energy to increase to 80 per cent,” Mr Ndomba pledged.
However, he pointed out that one of the challenges behind the failure by the larger population turn to clean energy was low understanding of the public on the importance of using clean energy for domestic use.
On his part, Mr Antigon Kavishe, Kigamboni Depot Manager, said the reduction in time for offloading gas means that a final consumer would be guaranteed to get the product easily.
