Since 1988, the crude oil terminal at Mongstad has been the hub for the distribution network on the Norwegian continental shelf. It is still regarded as one of the world’s best terminals.
The price of a barrel of oil was USD 14, people flocked to see the film Rain Man and a mobile phone weighed several kilos. In the middle of March the same year the Jarena shuttle tanker sailed in the Fens fiord.
The largest tankers can carry up to two million barrels of oil and leave the Mongstad terminal with a cargo worth NOK one billion.
Carrying crude from the Statfjord field she was the first ship to arrive at the Mongstad terminal north of Bergen.
The future plant manager was waiting on the jetty, tripping with impatience in his safety boots. When Jarena was safely moored, the terminal was formally transferred to him by the construction manager.
More than 53,000 ships have arrived at the refinery since it opened in 1975.
Over six billion barrels of oil have spent one or several nights in one of the terminal’s six rock caverns, each of them of the size of a cruise ship.
Good natural conditions 
Operator Jostein Haukås is one of the staff members ensuring that loading and unloading are carried out safely and efficiently.
The property was perfect for a crude terminal. The refinery on the site was already in operation. Furthermore, Mongstad is close to important oil fields in the North Sea.
The trip back and forth to the fields was therefore short for the shuttle tankers. The quality of the rock made it possible to make enormous rock caverns for crude storage.
And in the deep Fens fiord not even the world’s largest oil tankers are in danger of touching the seabed.
Higher prices
Imagine you are selling your car. If you are not in a hurry, you can wait for the right offer. But if you have to sell it immediately, you cannot expect to get the same price for the vehicle.
The same principle applies to oil sale. Thanks to the Mongstad terminal StatoilHydro can wait for the best offer instead of sending the oil to the market as soon as it comes up from the well.
”The terminal is a state-of-the-art plant, even after 20 years,” believes Kjetil Johnsen, head of oil trading in Stavanger.
Johnsen emphasise the importance of the terminal’s future – both with regard to supplying the refinery at Mongstad and as a port of shipment for crude sale.
- Completed in the spring of 1988
- The Europe's second largest oil port measured in tonnage
- Receives 190 million barrels of crude per year from ships
- Another 125 million barrels of oil per year are piped from Troll
- Some of the crude is refined, the rest is shipped to the markets
- Receives 2,000 ships a year, 250 of which are crude oil carries
|
