Trescorp Alliance Pte., a Singaporean trader of oil and petroleum products, plans to establish a lubricant park in Sohar Port, Oman, a company official told Lube Report Asia last week.
A lube park similar to those owned by Shell, Total and Sinopec in Singapore is being considered, the official said. The lube park is still at the planning stages and we are looking at toll-blending of industrial lubricants, passenger car motor oils and marine lubricants.
Construction of the five-hectare lube park wont begin for at least another year or two, during the second phase of its development at Sohar Port. Trescorps first phase of construction will start next year and will include a 45-hectare oil storage terminal along with refineries for gasoline, jet fuel and asphalt. The U.S. $600 million terminal will be operational by 2020 with six deep-water berths and storage capacity that will be expandable up to 1.8 million cubic meters.
Trescorp plans to deliver products from the site via road tanker access as well as through barges and tankers bunkering at the port. The port is near the Strait of Hormuz, facing the Arabian Sea, making it a valuable shipping route to the Gulf States, eastern Africa and India.
We will have to look at the needs of the market and potential partnerships, but the plant will [mostly] target the Gulf Cooperation Council markets, said the official. GCC is a regional political union made up of Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates.
Trescorp Alliance is headquartered in Singapore and supplies crude oil to traders and oil refineries worldwide.