Jumbo Ships More Cargo to Mexico Refinery

Jumbo Shipping, part of the Jumbo-SAL-Alliance, is deploying once more its K-class heavy-lift vessel Jumbo Kinetic to ship heavy-lift industrial components from Asia to the Dos Bocas oil refinery in Mexico.

The cargo loaded at Phu My in Vietnam included a batch of radiant modules that will be used alongside a convection and stack modules to form part of the refinery’s fired heater. The radiant modules measured 18.4 x 13.4 x 24.0 metres, with the heaviest unit weighing 480 tonnes.

The Jumbo Kinetic had previously transported a 1,850-tonne regenerator, a reactor, a stabilizer and other components to Dos Bocas from the South Korean ports of Masan and Ulsan.

For the latest shipment, the smaller pieces of cargo were loaded first into storage areas below deck. Once hatches were closed, the heavier units were loaded on deck using single crane lifts.

“Our lifting plans for the stacks resulted in faster loading and less risk or damage to the cargo and by using uplift clips and stoppers to seafasten the cargo, we saved the client time and resources,” the alliance said.

Dos Bocas, in the southern state of Tabasco, will be Mexico’s largest oil refinery. The state-led project will have a processing capacity of 340,000 barrels-per-day.

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 increasing 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.