Comparative Study of Thermal Coal Import Facilities

The recent growth in demand for commodities in developing economies has opened up opportunities for new ocean shipping facilities in these regions. The coastal zones of these developing regions are often characterized by an absence of existing or candidate deep water ports and a broad shallow coastal shelf with insufficient water depth for navigation of large vessels near shore. In the rapidly growing power sector, the conventional approach to importing coal is through the development of port infrastructure including dredged navigation channels, breakwaters and jetties. For dedicated facilities, there are competing alternative methods that can offer operational and economic advantages; these include offshore transshipment to lighter vessels with shallower drafts, and hydraulic transport through subsea slurry pipelines from offshore unloading and processing facilities. This case study compares the logistics and relative economics of the transshipment and slurry pipeline alternatives to a base case conventional port infrastructure project for receiving thermal coal at a coastal power plant facility. The authors' analysis shows that, for a range of typical regional conditions, both the slurry and the transshipment alternatives are superior to the conventional port baseline in certain instances. A significant advantage of the alternate import systems is that they provide a means to lessen or avoid the costs of capital and maintenance dredging for lengthy navigation channels sufficiently deep for today's large ocean going vessels.