Jumbo Ships Bulky Components for Mexico Refinery

Jumbo Shipping has called into action one of its two K-class heavy-lift vessels, the Jumbo Kinetic, to ship a batch of oversized components from South Korea to the Dos Bocas oil refinery in Mexico.

The cargo transported for client Mammoet included the heaviest piece of equipment to date destined for the 340,000 barrels-per-day, state-led project – a 42-metre-long, 16-metre-wide regenerator weighing 1,850 tonnes. The piece was the second-heaviest ever loaded by the Jumbo Kinetic’s two cranes, which have a maximum lifting capacity of 1,500 tonnes each.

The regenerator, along with a reactor, a stabilizer and other components, were loaded at Masan and Ulsan in southern South Korea and then carried across the Pacific to the discharge port at Dos Bocas in the southern state of Tabasco.

“Here, they faced some environmental challenges during offloading operations due to swell, but nothing the team was not prepared for,” Jumbo said.

Once the cargo had been discharged, the Jumbo Kinetic was scheduled to return to Asia via the Panama Canal to collect more components for Dos Bocas, a US$9 billion project slated to become Mexico’s largest oil refinery.

The facility is the centrepiece of a national refining strategy designed to wean Mexico off expensive fuel imports, which account for about 77 percent of domestic demand, according to state-run oil and gas giant Pemex.

The focus on upping fuel output has also called for an overhaul of Pemex’s six existing refineries.

Although detractors of President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador’s strategy have claimed it makes little economic and environmental sense, investment in Mexico’s ailing refining network is providing breakbulk with a slew of new cargo-carrying opportunities, with high volumes of project cargo shipments arriving from all over the world into Mexico.

Dos Bocas is slated to come online in 2023.

Jumbo is a member of the Jumbo-SAL-Alliance.

The alliance will be exhibiting at Breakbulk Europe 2022, the world's largest event for the breakbulk and project cargo industry, taking place this year on 17-19 May in Rotterdam.