Three crude tankers holding about 1.5 million barrels of crude oil for Bharat Petroleum Corporation (BPCL) are stranded at the Mumbai port, which has been shut following an oil spill, a company spokesman said on Monday.
“Our three cargoes– two cargoes of 80,000 tonnes each and one of 40,000 tonnes- are waiting in outer anchorage for berth, said company spokesman.
Another official said, a 30,000 tonne naphtha export cargo was waiting to sail from the Mumbai port. “We have loaded the cargo for Marubeni, but because of restrictions it cannot leave the port,” he said. The collision of two Panamanian cargo ships off Mumbai’s coast over the weekend shut down India’s busiest port and triggered an oil slick that had spread to a distance of 2 nautical miles.
A third company official said, if operations at the Mumbai port continued to be suspended for another 3-4 days, his firm might divert the crude oil cargoes to its 150,000 barrels per day (bpd) Kochi plant. BPCL also operates a 240,000 bpd refinery in Mumbai where another state refiner Hindustan Petroleum Corp owns a 130,000 bpd plant.
Operations at Mumbai refineries have not been hit as the explorer Oil and Natural Gas Corp has raised crude supplies via a pipeline from its Mumbai High fields, said spokesmen from both BPCL and HPCL. An official from HPCL said the firm had unloaded its crude tanker but the vessel was unable to turn back after delivering the cargo.

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