Oman Shipping Company SAOC (OSC), Oman Trading International Ltd (OTI) and Vitol signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) to formulate a business partnership to provide for the transportation requirements of Oman Trading International Ltd, mainly for the export of products out of Oman from Salalah Methanol Company and Aromatics Oman LLC.
The MoU includes agreement of OSC and Vitol to form a joint venture to own three newly-built methanol tankers in the ranges of 37,000dwt to 47,000dwt for the transportation of methanol, paraxylene, benzene and LPG which would then be charted to OTI.
According to the MoU, the new company will transport part of derivatives produced by the Salalah Methanol Project to world markets. The project which will start production in 2009 will have a total production of one million tpa of methanol.
Almost half of this quantity will be exported on FOB basis and the rest will be for domestic use. Aromatics Oman is expected to commence production by June 2009 and will produce 820,000tpa of paraxylene, 210,000tpa of benzene, and 64,100tpa of LPG.
The two off takers for this project are OTI and LG International. OTI is expected to lift 80 per cent of all the production.