KUWAIT - Terminals.

Kuwait has four oil terminals located near its refineries. The largest are Mina Al Ahmadi and Mina Abdullah, now being upgraded. The others are at Shuaiba in Kuwait itself and at Mina Saud in the Divided Zone. All were damaged in the war.

Mina Ahmadi was less affected than the other terminals, though its onshore crude oil loading facilities and a pumping station were destroyed and the offshore Sea Island loading station was crippled. The south pier was virtually destroyed, but the north pier had little damage and was restored soon after the war. There is much work to be done at the south pier (see DT 22). Before the Gulf crisis, the 'T'-shaped south pier used to run seaward for 1.3 km with eight crude berths. The north pier, 5.6 km north of the southern facility, had four berths. Sea Island, 12 km east of the piers, had two berths handling vessels of up to 326,000 dwt. Crude oil used to be fed to the Sea Island by a 48-inch submarine pipeline to four arms, each loading at a rate of up to 19,500 tons/hour. A single point mooring, located 2.4 km east of the Sea Island, was equipped with three strings of floating hoses, two 16-inch strings for crude loading and one 12-inch string for bunker loading.

When Kuwait started exporting oil again in the second half of 1991, Mina Ahmadi's north pier was the only crude oil loading station available and only vessels of up to 250,000 dwt could use it, so the port could only handle some 300,000 b/d. A single point mooring (SPM) off Mina Ahmadi was brought back into operation in mid-1992. The SPM itself was not damaged, but pipelines linking it to onshore installations were cut. Located about 15 km from the port itself, the SPM now has the capacity to load about 700,000 b/d of crude into ULCCs. The first phase of repair work on the south pier of Mina Ahmadi, which includes Kuwait's only LPG loading station, was completed in March 1992. The terminal was operational again in September 1992 and started handling refined product exports.

The Sea Island was replaced by two single buoy moorings (SBMs) in late 1994. Since then, Mina Ahmadi has fully repaired or rebuilt oil storage tanks, the pipeline network for the transfer, filling and loading of crude between gathering centres, export facilities and gasoline tanks at the Sabhan industrial area. Storage capacity at Mina Al Ahmadi, reduced from 14m barrels in mid-1990 to 3m barrels in 1991, has been raised to more than 20m barrels - with Chicago Bridge & Iron of the US and Tekfen of Turkey having built 18 new storage units at the two tank farms under contracts awarded in August 1992. A new distribution control system at the two tank farms was built by Pritchard Corp. of the US under a 16-month contract awarded in March 1993. This $50m contract also covered the upgrading of instrumentation and manifold work at the facilities.

In September 1992, offshore facilities at Mina Abdullah were back in full operational capacity, following repairs at jetty No. 1, handling tankers with a length of up to 207 metres and capacity of 150,000 dwt. The smaller No. 2 jetty had been brought back into service in March 1992.

The terminal at Shuaiba, heavily damaged, was restored in late 1996. It is again serving the oil refinery and LPG plant nearby. It has four oil product berths, loading vessels of up to 70,000 dwt, and a facility for LPG loading.