NST, October 28th, 2002 - Chevron Texaco's fuel and Marine Marketing (FAMM) - Indah Sdn Bhd has officially taken over the operation of Westport Bunkering Sdn Bhd (webs).

Commercial operation of the onshore bunkering facility started last week with the discharging of 60,000 tonnes of high sulphur fuel from the 240m MT Samar Spirit last Wednesday.

"We have leased the bunkering terminals from Webs. The facility has come 196,000 cubic m of bunker storage facility located in Pulau Indah, said FAMM-Indah chief executive officer Salvatore Drago.

FAMM-Indah Sdn Bhd is joint venture entity between FAMM and Coral Indah Sdn Bhd FAMM wild hold the majority stake of 70 per cent while the remaining will be held by Coral Indah Sdn Bhd .

"Initially, we will be transporting blended bunker from various parts of the world and eventually, when the entire facility takes off by the first quarter of the next year, we will be maximizing our onshore facilities for blending to produce 180 cst and 360 cst ," said the Drago.

Drago said FAMM has a considerable expertise in trading, risk management, research and development , supply and distribution of various bunker fuels.

Unlike other players in the market, FAMM offers customized term supply contract at single or multiple ports to meet customers' lifting pattern. FAMM currently supplies lubricants to more than 700 ports and fuel to more than 250 ports around the world. This will be an added advantage to local ship owners.

"In addition to that we are also in a position to help our valued customers to better manage their bunker costs by providing price risk management and alternative pricing mechanisms. To ensure customer receive superior technical support we also have in-house research laboratories within the facilities being managed by Saybolt (M) Sdn Bhd," said Drago.

Executive chairman of Westport Tan Sri G.Gnanalingam said ventures is an ideal alliance that places Westport in a cutting edge position to offer value-added bunkering services and savings to vessel operators calling at Port Klang.

"The move will further enhance Westport's transhipment hub status as the availability of bunker at the port will further increase the number of ship calls and reduce port diversion time to another bunkering port," he added.

Meanwhile, Westport will be developing Liquid Berth 4 ( LB4) to cater to the fast growing volume of liquid bulk traffic.

The completion of the new berth will further expand the capability of Westport to handle liquid bulk traffic to five million tones per annum from the present three million tones.

"We have to develop this facility in anticipation of the growth in volume. The operators of the liquid bulk terminal, namely Terminal Bersama, Summit Petroleum, Caltex, Mobil and Stolthaven, are consistently increasing their tonnage and we feel it is timely to develop the additional facilities," said Gnanalingam.

According to him, the operation of FAMM-Indah at Westport Bunkering Terminal has further increased the utilization level of current liquid bulk terminal.

"We are happy to note that moved by the company to carry out the engineering works to upgrade the 200,000m tonnes facility will further enhance the usage of liquid berths,' he said.

In view of growing demand, the barge loading a liquid berth will solely concentrate at the LB3 (inner berth).

The installation work on the LB3 outer berth is progressing well and is expected to be completed by April next year.

In addition to that, modification work on Liquid Bulk Berth 1, is expected to be completed by the end of this year.

The completion of the refurbishing work will allow smaller bunker barges to berth at Liquid Berth 1 and it will able to accommodate ships with 110,000 displacement tones without any problem.