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SMEC International Agrees to Design and Supervise Ethiopia’s New Oil Terminal

SMEC international PTY, an Australian based consultancy firm, concluded an ETB 250 million agreement with Ethiopia to design and supervise the 3 billion birr project of the country’s largest oil terminal. In accordance with the agreement, the firm will prepare the final design of the terminal which is to be built in Dukem, Oromia Region, administer the project, and help the Ethiopian Petroleum Supply Enterprise (EPSE) in choosing a contractor.

The oil terminal is one of the projects under the enterprise’s strategic Depot Construction Master Development Programme which aims at building four depots nationwide. The Dukem oil terminal will rest at 10ha and will receive, store and dispatch automotive diesel oil, gasoline, aviation turbine fuel and ethanol. Higamlak Haile, the deputy CEO of Petroleum Storage & Engineering at EPSE said the depot would have an automated control system and aviation turbine fuel stores.

Currently, the country has 13 terminals which have a capacity of reserving 367 million liters of oil. The to be built terminal alone can reserve 240 million liters. This will advance the nation’s oil reserving capacity by 65pc and increase the duration of reserve to 65 days from the current 36. It will also provide petroleum to 24 petroleum retail companies, of which 17 of them are local.
SMEC will execute the project in two stages. During the first stage, it will design the terminal for 2.2 million dollars within 10 months and during the second stage, it will manage and supervise the project.

The nation’s oil demand increases by 10pc annually reaching over 3.5 million tons in 2017.

Source: Addis Fortune