Marine Engineers raise alarm over indiscriminate citing of Tank Farms

By ZION Olalekan |

The Nigerian Institute of Marine Engineers and Naval Architects (NIMNENA) has said that suitable locations for the construction of ship building and ship repair yards in Nigeria have been taken over by petroleum tank farms sprawling the waterfronts across the country, especially Lagos.

NIMENA also chided the Department of Petroleum Resources (DPR) for not exercising caution in going ahead to issue operating licenses to the tank farm owners.

Speaking at the 7th Annual Conference and Annual General Meeting of the institution, its National Chairman, Engr. Henry Unuigbe said that the upsurge of petroleum tank farms across the waterfronts has robbed the nation of suitable locations for citing ship building and ship repair yards.

According to him, there is insufficiency of ship repair yards in Nigeria; he said the only big one is the Niger Dock located around Tin Can Port, followed by Naval Dockyard in Apapa, even as he said that these cannot handle big ships.

He lamented that other landlocked countries are doing better than Nigeria in this regard despite being blessed with maritime resources.

He argued that without adequate and suitable repair yards, shipowners will have no choice than to continue taking their ships outside Nigeria for maintenance and in most cases at a relatively higher cost noting that Nigeria economy suffers as a result of such diversion.

The NIMENA President also noted that construction of ship repair and ship building yards cannot be sighted at the hinterland but that it must be close to the sea.

He said, “For repair yards, we have seen the upsurge of petroleum tank farms along our waterfronts, emphasis are not being paid to the sectors that are supposed to move the nation forward, I know that the petroleum sector is very important, but you do not cede your waterfronts entirely to tank farm construction, we should do it with caution.

“So, if you are talking about ship repair yard, you cannot come into the hinterland to start constructing one, it must be close to the sea where you have a large volume.

“Along this stretch from Takwa Bay to Kirikiri end, you would see a large number of tank farms, if you have an investor coming to site a ship repair yard; you know that there is already a challenge in that regard, stability of location of a ship repair yard is an issue that has to be faced squarely”

It means that we are not getting our policies right, those who are giving licenses to owners of tank farms (DPR) should think twice and halt the trend”.

Unuigbe also noted that apart from the upsurge in tank farm construction, there has been neglect in the education sector. He said the maritime sector that supposed to produce the manpower needed to build ships is also challenged.

“We have MAN Oron which has its own challenges, we cannot compare it to some of the standard maritime academies elsewhere, the manpower may not be fully met but if you have to think about ship building, you must put up a policy to ensure upbringing of engineers that we can leave the stage for.

“Nigeria is losing billions of Naira by neglecting this sector, I may not be able to quantify the amount in monetary terms due to shipowners taking their ships outside the country, I know we have repair yards but it may not be sufficient, in terms of the size of ships, there is a limit to the size of ships that Niger Dock can accommodate and it’s the biggest in the country followed by Naval dockyard.

“We are not only losing money from our shipowners going out, we are also losing from other shipowners outside the country who might want to bring in their ships here and we would generate foreign exchange” he said.