Completion of the North Mindanao Import Facility

Pilipinas Shell Petroleum Corporation (PSPC), the local subsidiary of energy giant Royal Dutch Shell Plc., officially inaugurated the North Mindanao Import Facility (NMIF) in Cagayan de Oro on Tuesday, July 19. The project was planned to contribute toward two directives of the Department of Energy (DoE) under the Philippine Development Plan 2011-2016, which are: to promote development and upgrade of the downstream infrastructure, and to update the Oil Supply Contingency Plan through the establishment of oil stockpile.

The new P3.6 billion import facility in CDO was built in a three-hectare compound and commissioned in partnership with the Philippine Ports Authority (PPA). It is aimed to be the oil firm’s secondary supply and distribution hub after the Tabango refinery in Batangas. It can store 90 million liters or approximately 566083US barrels of petroleum products with its 10 horizontal and 3 vertical tanks.

Shell Philippines would bring petroleum imports to the Batangas refinery before distribution to Visayas and Mindanao because there was no facility outside Luzon that could accomodate large capacities of petroleum products. “This is the only facility in Mindanao which can receive medium range (MR) vessels with equivalent load of 300,000 barrels. Other facilities can also receive imports but not with the same capacity and size,” said Ed Chua, PSPC country chairman. The NMIF will receive one medium range (MR) vessel every 45 days. It will serve Mindanao’s 62.46 thousand barrels per calendar day (MBCD) demand and the Visayas’ 49.88 MBCD oil demand. At present, Shell has around 200 retail stations in Mindanao. ●