Oil shipment concerns taken up in Parliament
A number of ships carrying crude oil were unable to unload their oil shipments over the past few weeks due to a rupture in an oil pipeline.
This issue was taken up in Parliament and attention was focused on the Demurrage charges that should be payed to these vessels.
Leader of the JVP, Parliamentarian Anura Kumara Dissanayake shared these views:
The city elite ship, which docked at the Colombo Harbour on the 20th of May with 90,000 metric tonnes of crude oil began unloading its fuel. It was then that the pipeline connected to the buoy ruptured and unloading of fuel was stopped on the 23rd of May. From the 24th of June we have been paying $23,000 on a daily basis as Demurrage charges; that amounts to around 3 million rupees. Without inquiring from this ship, the CPC hires a ship by the name of Argos which can store 40,000 metric tonnes of oil. However, the city a light vessel refused to unload to this ship. As a result we are paying million for this ship which is docked at the Colombo Harbour. We have been forced to pay Demurrage charges to four ships carrying crude oil, two ships carrying petrol and diesel as well as one storage ship. They receive a cut from this, from the fuel as well as the contract to hire the ship. All this burden is then placed on the people.
Minister of Petroleum Industries Anura Priyadarshana Yapa expressed these views on the subject:
Two out of the three vessels carrying crude oil have finished unloading, we have the capacity to store the contents of roughly around two crude oil ships. Since the refinery did not function for a month and since we were unable to fix the pipeline very soon, our storage capacity has maxed out. We have not payed any Demurrage charges to the delays caused to the crude oil ships; they have not asked for it either. The Argos ship was hired based on the consensus of both companies and the city elite vessel. Later a legal dispute arose between the owners of the city elite vessel and the oil supplier and that is why they were unable to unload .
The post Oil shipment concerns taken up in Parliament appeared first on Sri Lanka News - Newsfirst | News1st | newsfirst.lk | Breaking.
