Sonangol is unloading 34 tanks of liquefied petroleum gas (LPG), known as cooking gas, at the Barra do Dande Ocean Terminal (TOBD), as part of the completion of that project designed to gather a storage capacity of 102 thousand meters cubic meters of that fuel, optimize the distribution and constitution of the country’s Strategic Petroleum Derivatives Reserve.
The operation is complex, according to the project director, Mauro Graça, quoted yesterday by the Sonangol program at RNA Ngol, involving structures (also called LPG cigars) 71 meters long, eight meters in diameter and weighing 400 tons, which represents 10,000 cubic meters of storage per unit.
“We usually say that each of the reservoirs is equivalent to a 25-story building”, said Mauro Graça to illustrate the complexity of the operation, adding that such structures come fully assembled from China, where they were produced under the same standard in three different entities.
The project director added that, after being transported by sea to Angola, the reservoirs were stored at the Sonils Base, in Luanda, and were now being taken by sea to TOBD.
“So far, the operation is proceeding as normal, from the loading process at Sonils, to the route and unloading on Dande, as well as the ascent on Dande, from the maritime part of the project, to the area where they are installed, on land”, declared Mauro Graça.
TOBD, he considered, “represents immense benefits for the whole country, both financially, due to the total release of floating storage costs, and from the perspective of operational safety, since we are going to eliminate risks that are currently associated with the movement of a product as flammable as this one off our coast.”
In the initial phase, TOBD will have a total storage capacity of 582,000 cubic meters, of which 320,000 cubic meters will be diesel, 160,000 will be gasoline and 102,000 will be LPG.
The second phase provides for an increase of 148,000 cubic meters, bringing the total capacity to 730,000.
