CHITTAGONG, Oct 12: The Eastern Refinery Ltd (ERL) will construct a 65 kilometer pipeline or single point mooring (SPM) for lightering crude oil from mother tankers at Kutubdia deep sea to the ERL depot at Patenga.

The hosepipe line will be installed under the sea 7 to 8 kilometers off the Kutubdia headquarters and the project will take three years to complete. The single point mooring will take only two days to unload a mother vessel.

Lightering of imported crude oil from a mother tanker by the Bangladesh Shipping Corporation (BSC) lightering vessels now takes at least 11 days.

If constructed, the SPM will save the ERL from the existing huge expenditure on account of a) long over-stay of mother vessel at outer anchorage at US$5,000 per day, b) lightering charges of the BSC at $5.47 per tonne and c) 0.3 per cent system loss in the lightering of oil from mother tankers, ERL officials said.

The estimated cost of the proposed single point mooring has been fixed at $132 million (about Tk925 crore). International financing agency Islamic Development Bank (IDB) has initially agreed to fund the project, sources added.

Senior officials of the ERL said Monday that a high power delegation from the IDB will visit the project site at Kutubdia outer anchorage by the end of October and convey their decision to the ERL authority soon after.

Officials said, international tenders were invited for the feasibility study of the project and Enerpac Petroleum, a private enterprise of Pakistan, qualified for the same. They submitted the feasibility report to the Bangladesh PetroleumCorporation (BPC) in June, which was approved by the BPC governing body.

Sources said the government after approving the project at the Executive Committee of the National Economic Council (ECNEC) meeting had submitted it to the IDP last July.