• Requires $ 20-25 m investment for restoration: LIOC MD 

Bureau Veritas in Sri Lanka has completed the health assessment of seven out of 10 tanks at the Trincomalee Oil Tank Farm in China Bay – to be redeveloped under phase one of the Trincomalee Oil Tank Complex Development Project – and has identified that only one of the seven tanks require any major repairs.

Speaking to The Sunday Morning Business, Lanka Indian Oil Company (LIOC) Managing Director Manoj Gupta revealed that Bureau Veritas had completed the health assessment of seven tanks and was currently concluding the health assessment of the remaining three tanks, which would be completed by the third week of March. 

Commenting further, he stated: “I am yet to receive the report from Bureau Veritas, but from what we are given to understand, one of the tanks will require considerable replacement of its plates but the six other tanks will only require minor repairs to bring them to usable condition.”

He stated that according to current estimates, phase one of the redevelopment of the Trincomalee Oil Tank Farm would require an investment of around $ 20-25 million, which involved an average investment of $ 1 million per tank (for 10 tanks), with the remainder being for the laying of new pipelines.

The Trinco Petroleum Terminal (Pvt) Ltd. (TPTL) is LIOC’s Joint Venture (JV) with the Ceylon Petroleum Corporation (CPC) for the redevelopment of 61 tanks of the Trincomalee Oil Tank Farm.

The Trincomalee Oil Tank Complex Development Project was approved by the Cabinet on 4 January 2022. Accordingly, it was decided that 24 of the 99 tanks would be given to the CPC, 14 tanks to the LIOC, and 61 tanks to the TPTL – the latter on a 50-year lease, with CPC having the majority stake in the subsidiary. 

Consequently, LIOC and CPC entered into an agreement on 6 January 2022 for the joint development of the 61 tanks held by Trinco Petroleum Terminal as a JV. CPC holds a 51% stake in the company while LIOC holds a 99% stake.

The Trincomalee Oil Tank Farm, built by the British as a refuelling station during World War II, is located on 850 acres of land and originally contained 101 tanks, each with the capacity to hold 12,100 MT of oil. 

Out of the original 101 tanks, two were destroyed in a kamikaze attack during a Japanese air raid on Trincomalee on 9 April 1942 and when a Royal Ceylon Air Force plane crashed in the early 1960s.