…As BAM Starts Construction on Rio Tinto Terminal Expansion***
Norway has evacuated all 137 crew from one of its warships after it collided in a fjord with a Maltese oil tanker.
Eight people were lightly injured in the collision in the Hjeltefjord near Bergen. The KNM Helge Ingstad frigate has been listing dangerously.
The warship had been returning from Nato military exercises. The tanker, the Sola TS, was slightly damaged and it appears that it did not spill oil.
The incident led to the shutdown of a major oil terminal and a gas plant.
What is known about Thursday’s incident?
The two vessels collided at about 04:00 local time (03:00 GMT) as the frigate was sailing inner fjords for training, officials say.
The tanker had already left Equinor’s Sture oil terminal with a cargo of North Sea crude, Reuters news agency reports.
“Due to the damage to the frigate it was moved to a safe place,” Nato’s Allied Maritime Command said in a statement.
The tanker, which has a crew of 23, returned to port for inspection.
It was not immediately clear what had caused the collision.
What about economic damage?
The Sture export oil terminal, as well as the Kollsnes gas plant and several offshore oilfields, were shut down as a precaution but resumed operation on Thursday afternoon, Equinor said in a statement.
The Sture terminal is a major tanker port, with almost 25% of Norway’s oil production passing through the facility.
Meanwhile, the Kollsnes plant processes gas from several fields for a number of European countries, including the UK.
It was not immediately known how the temporary closure of the facilities would impact on wholesale gas prices.
An unnamed official told AFP news agency that a “small oil slick” had been detected from the frigate.
“It took on a lot of water and there is a real danger that it sinks where it is,” the official said.
In the meantime, the mobilization and construction works on Rio Tinto Terminal A expansion on behalf of Canada LNG have started, BAM International, part of Dutch BAM Group said.
BAM announced the contract just before Mitsubishi Corporation, Shell, PETRONAS, PetroChina and Korea Gas Corporation (KOGAS) took the final investment decision (FID) on LNG Canada in early October.
LNG Canada agreed to extend the existing BC Works Terminal A in exchange for Rio Tinto’s Terminal B, which handles exports of finished products for Rio Tinto’s ongoing operations. The location of Terminal B coincides with LNG Canada‘s export terminal in Kitimat, British Columbia, located approximately 600 km north-west of Vancouver. .
The project will consist of a 320 x 60 metre terminal for the Rio Tinto BC Works, as well as a berth for cargo barges. Both elements will be built on more than 400 steel piles with a concrete deck of approximately 20,000 m3.
BAM and its partners JJM Construction from Canada and Manson Construction from USA expect the USD 108 million project to complete in autumn 2020.
The first phase of construction of LNG Canada export terminal will take approximately five years, with the first LNG expected before the middle of the next decade.
LNG Canada is said to represent one of the most significant energy investment projects in Canadian history, with the total estimated development cost of about USD 14 billion.
The facility will initially export LNG from two processing units or “trains” totaling 14 million tonnes per annum (mtpa), with the potential to expand to four trains in the future.
BBC with additional report from World Maritime News
