Video: We would have to pay demurrages: Minister

15 July 2014 03:57 pm

Petroleum Industries Minister Anura Priyadarshana Yapa said today even though the Ceylon Petroleum Corporation (CPC) would have to pay demurrages for the ships anchored due to the breakdown of the buoy carrying crude oil to the Sapugaskanda oil refinery, the Ministry would not burden the people by increasing fuel prices due to this.

“We will have to incur a loss because of the breakdown of the buoy. But we will never land the burden on the people. This is a risky industry and we may have to bear these losses when running this industry. We have never burden people due to losses such as this, despite in fluctuations in the oil prices in the world market”, Minister Yapa said.

He further said that the damaged tube line was temporally replaced with an old tube, and assured that the Sapugaskanda oil refinery which had been closed down over a month, would resume operations by tomorrow.

“We have replaced the broken tube line with an old one, which had been abandoned for about 12 years. And now we can pump the crude oil from the three ships, which are containing 90,000 metric tons of crude oil each in the Colombo Port, and the pumping is being done and it will be completed within ten days,” he said.

Minister Yapa said that the CPC had ordered a new hose from a reputed tube manufacturing company after it was approved by our technical experts and added that no ship was turned back due to the breakdown of the buoy and assured that sufficient stock of fuel was there to cater to the needs of the country.(Darshana Sanjeewa)

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