KPA starts night piloting to cut cost for shipping lines

The Kenya Ports Authority has started night pilotage of petroleum tankers.

Pilotage or piloting of a vessel is the process of navigating it through dangerous waters in or out of a habour or river mouth.

At midnight on July 1, KPA managing director Captain William Ruto manoeuvred the Singaporean-flagged oil vessel Spetses Lady from the Mombasa port, marking the first time this has been done at night. The vessel had brought 105 million litres of oil.

“It is a promise that I gave myself that starting July 2023, we will commence night piloting on all petroleum tankers calling on the Port of Mombasa,” Captain Ruto said.

Night piloting had never been done before because of safety, among other reasons.

However, the new off-shore Kipevu Oil Terminal, located opposite the existing on-shore Kipevu Oil Terminal, has been built with safety measures in place that allows for night piloting.

“Our pilots, me included, have undergone several trainings and simulations to see that while conducting piloting at night it will be safe,” Captain Ruto said.

This is a major breakthrough for the KPA and the Mombasa port.

Oil industry stakeholders have been complaining of the high cost of doing business at the Mombasa port because of the demurrage ships have to pay while waiting to load or offload goods.

For a ship like the Spetses Lady to wait for even 12 hours, it may pay between $25,000 to $50,000 (approximately between Sh3.5 million to Sh7 million).

The night piloting thus reduce the waiting time, reducing demurrage charges.

This means the products that the vessels bring will also have lower costs because companies pass on the extra demurrage charges to the end users eventually.

“Also, by us conducting night piloting, we will be able to reduce the ship turnaround time by about 12 hours. We have a target, as KPA, that the ship turnaround time should be within three days,” Captain Ruto said.

The new Kipevu Oil Terminal is about 770 metres long and can berth four ships, each weighing over 170,000 deadweight tonnes at a go, but currently only three berths have been completed and can be berthed concurrently.

The fourth one has already been constructed provisionally but will be fitted with facilities like gangway in future commensurate with demand, to be able to handle a fourth ship.

It also has five sub-sea pipelines which were buried 26 metres under the seabed to allow for future dredging of the channel without interfering with the pipes.

The gangway in the new terminal makes it safer to board ships that have big freeboards.

The freeboard is the height of a ship's side between the waterline and the deck.

For instance, the Spetses Lady, with a deadweight tonnage of about 120,000, which brought fuel for the transit countries including Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, South Sudan and part of the Eastern DRC, has a freeboard of more than 10 metres and climbing onto it using a pilot ladder is a dangerous affair, especially during bad weather like in June and July.

About 30 per cent of petroleum products that come to Kenya go to the transit countries.

By Mombasa port being more efficient, it means attracting more business from the transit countries.

Captain Ruto said with more efficiency, there will be need for more storage facilities.

“Whereas we all agree that we need to build capacity, we also know that this facility [new KOT] has a common user manifold that allows the private sector to plug in," Captain Ruto said.

“So, we have PVTI on the other side plugging in that will cater for the private sector.” 

Meanwhile, the Likoni floating bridge will be closed to the public for some time as it undergoes routine maintenance.

This means the bridge will remain literally open to allow for ships to pass, meaning it will allow for petroleum ships to come and go, through the channel anytime.