The Cochin Port will be made a global bunker destination like Fujairah (UAE) and Singapore, encouraging ships to stop by the Port for refuelling purpose.
This was decided at the fourth edition of the International Bunkering Conference held here on Friday. The deliberations held during the conference will pave way for improving the ease of doing business in bunkering at Cochin, towards achieving easier regulatory regime, ensuring efficient operational performance, high quality bunker and accurate measurement etc, a release said.
The conference was presided over by P Raveendran, chairman, Cochin Port Trust. A V Ramana, deputy chairman, Cochin Port Trust, P Nageswara Rao, chief commissioner, Customs, Central Excise and Service Tax, Rajnish Mehta, ED, HPCL, Prasad K Panicker, ED, BPCL-KR and P S Mony, GM, IOCL highlighted the growing importance of Cochin Port as a bunkering destination during the inaugural session.
The speakers in the business session presented perspectives on Cochin as a bunker destination, challenges in bunker sales, bunkering business in India and the perspective of the buyers. The participants hailed the Cochin Port model in promotion of bunkering trade and acknowledged that the same is widely discussed and appreciated in the shipping sector in India.
Topics like regulatory perspective of bunker quality control, prospects of LNG bunkering in India, legal issues in bunkering and matters pertaining to lab testing and quality control of bunker fuels were the points of discussion in the Technical Session. The participants called for facilitating floating storage of bunker for promoting off port limit bunkering.
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