Oman to build huge oil storage site

Omani firm signs $200m sugar refinery deal

MUSCAT, April 15, (RTRS): Oman is committed to building, and paying for, a huge facility to store up to 200 million barrels of crude oil at Duqm on the Arabian Sea, an oil and gas official said on Monday.

State-run Oman Oil Company (OOC) would fund the expected billion-dollar project to build what would be by far the world’s largest tank farm, OOC chairman Nasser Al Jashmi said.

“We are committed to build it and it will cost $1 billion. We already have assurances from regional countries that they will use it,” Nasser Al Jashmi, who is also the undersecretary of the ministry of oil and gas, said.

Iranian threats to block the Strait of Hormuz over the last few years have spurred the United Arab Emirates to open a bypass pipeline to the Gulf of Oman, while Saudi Arabia has increased its capacity to export oil from Red Sea Ports.

Oman hopes there is still demand from Gulf oil producers for added insurance against potential disruptions to pay to use its storage facility at the south east coast town of Duqm.

Also: MUSCAT: An Omani company and Britain’s Tate & Lyle Sugars, part of American Sugar Holdings (ASR Group), has signed an agreement with Oman’s port of Sohar to build a $200 million sugar refinery there.

Company officials said construction of the sugar refinery, the country’s first, by South African builder Bosch Projects would start in the third quarter of this year.

“It will produce 1 million tonnes of sugar per year. It will start production by the end of 2015,” Ashwin Rana, project director of the newly established Oman Sugar Refinery Co, told Reuters on Sunday. He said the firm was a joint venture of local businessman Nasser Al Hosni and Tate & Lyle Sugars. BOFA Merrill Lynch1052.00 EFG Hermes 1127.00 SICO Bahrain 1017.00 Beltone Financial 1106.00 HSBC 1138.00 Average 1088.00