GANDHIDHAM: The Deendayal Port Trust (DPT) will develop three new oil jetties at a cost of over Rs 550 crore, which will help double its present liquid cargo handling capacity at Kandla in Gujarat.

DPT, one of the 12 major ports in India, operates six oil jetties at Kandla which can handle 12 million metric tonne of liquid cargo per annum.

“We have a lot of oil jetties coming up at Kandla. We already have six. Two are under construction and tenders for three more have been floated,” said Mr. Sanjay Mehta, IFS, Chairman of DPT, which floated three tenders for constructing oil jetties number 9, 10 and 11 recently.

“At present, liquid cargo forms 60 per cent of the total cargo volumes handled by DPT. With new jetties coming up, this capacity will go up,” he added. The liquid cargo handled

by DPT at Kandla includes petroleum, oil and lubricant products, edible oil, phosphoric acid and LPG.

While jetty number 9 & 10 will cost around

Rs 100-150 crore each, oil jetty number 11 will cost over Rs 356 crore. Two more jetties with 5 million metric tonne capacity are under construction. With the addition of these five jetties that are proposed and under construction, the total liquid cargo handling capacity at Kandla will go up to 24.5 million metric tonne per annum.