Marine terminal scoping and redesign at Nghi Son Refinery

This is one of the country’s most important economic projects, viewed by the Vietnam government as strategically important to meeting the demands of industrialisation and modernisation.

With the development driven by a multinational venture, Royal HaskoningDHV was contracted by Amec Fosterto help redesign aspects of the new refinery, including petrochemical, storage, and marine import-export facilities, such as:

• An offshore single point mooring
• An oil transport pipeline and manifold
• Multiple jettiesand berths for liquid and solid products and tugs
• A berth entrance and channel basin
• A breakwater and embankment
• A seawater intake and outfall structures

The initial design for crude product imports involved using a SPM-located VLCC berth connected by a 12km shallow water pipeline to the shore. We performed a value engineering exercise of the marine design to understand how it could be optimised. The results of the exercise included proposing some important changes, such as:

• Relocating the harbour basin –balancing increased construction costs against reduced need for dredging
• Increasing the subsea pipeline length from 12km to 35km

With the project playing a significant role in Vietnam’s development, the value engineering and design services we delivered have been highly commended by our client as the new layout helped to save the considerable cost of dredging, including both capital dredging and annual maintenance dredging across the entire life cycle of the project.

Before the original design was realised, we were able to propose and develop solutions that led to a more cost-effective marine layout. This means that during the project’s design lifetime, maintenance costs have been reduced and a greater return on investment achieved.