Mbah: How Pinnacle Oil Braced Odds to Set Up World Class Fuel Receiving Terminal

24 Oct Mbah: How Pinnacle Oil Braced Odds to Set Up World Class Fuel Receiving Terminal

The Chief Executive Officer of Pinnacle Oil and Gas Limited, Chief Peter Mbah said the company faced daunting challenges, including the dearth of patient risk capital in Nigeria and the Covid-19 pandemic, to set up the world class offshore petroleum products receiving terminal.

The terminal, located at the Lekki Free Zone and built to handle to 300 million litres of refined petroleum products, was officially commissioned on Saturday by President Muhammadu Buhari.

“For us at Pinnacle, this facility is a monument to God’s divine inspiration, as well as patience and perseverance which carried us through the over 10 challenging years it took us to deliver this project,” Mbah said.

“We were hit from all sides with issues like the dearth of patient risk capital in Nigeria, Low international appetite for investing in Nigeria, COVID 19 etc,” he stated.

The result of its patience he added, was the establishment of “a world class petroleum terminal with the capacity to handle products in two directions both import and export. Mother Vessels arriving the facility will have the opportunity to berth at either of our two offshore berths.”

The facility has either the CBM, which is in 17m of water depth and can handle vessels of up to 120 million litres, or SPM, which is in about 23m of water depth and can handle vessel sizes of up to 200 million litres.

The moorings are connected to our storage facilities by four networked pipelines of 40km total length. The pipe networks are designed to empty the vessels in a maximum 2 days, a significant improvement on the previous duration which could take up to 30 days.

Its shore tank farm is currently able to handle up to 300 million litres of PMS and AGO, and the facility is designed to permit rapid discharge into trucks for evacuation at a rate of up to 20 million litres per day.

In addition to this, the terminal is supported by the World class services of the Lekki Free Zone Development Company in area of services like power supply, truck traffic management.

Mbah added that Pinnacle Oil and Gas has commenced the expansion of the size of the storage capacity at the terminal in two stages to the final designed capacity of 1 billion litres, and to diversify its product range to include the capacity to store other products like LPG, ATK and other classes of Kerosene.

“We will also be incorporating the capability to blend products to produce various specifications of products to service other international markets. We are already in advanced conversations with the Dangote group regarding collaborations to complement the operations of the nearby Dangote refinery which is soon to come on stream, with a view to forming the nucleus of what we believe will become Africa’s largest energy logistics hub.”