Importance of Container Terminals

 

A Container ship carries containers stacked close together and on top of each other. A crane lifts the containers onto and off the ship. 

he crane here moves along the dock and loads a container onto a lorry which takes it to a warehouse to be unpacked. The crane driver climbs the ladder to reach the controls.

These are empty containers at Karachi Port. One is being taken by a fork-lift truck to a warehouse to be filled with goods for export. That part of a port which has the cranes, warehouses and storage areas for containers, is called a container terminal.

This is the port of Singapore, you can see the container terminal with its yellow cranes and hundreds of containers.

Oil Tankers and Oil Terminals

Crude oil is oil before it has been refined. It is used to make different refined oil products such as petrol and aviation fuel. The quality of crude oil varies from oilfield to oilfield.

Crude oil may be found far away from places that need it. Some is pumped overland through pipelines to these places, but much of it has to be transported by sea in special cargo boats called ‘oil tankers’ e.g. from Saudi Arabia to Japan.

What is an Oil Tanker?

There are 2 types of oil tankers:

a) Larger ones that carry crude oil to refineries,

b) Smaller ones that carry refined oil products away from refineries.

The largest tankers, called supertankers, may be over 350 m long and can hold up to 500,000 tonnes of crude oil.

Crew members who have to go to the far end of the tanker, go on bicycle because it takes so long to walk. Also, the steel deck that covers the tank of oil is slippery when wet.

What is an Oil Terminal?

Oil is pumped onto the tanker before it starts its journey and is then pumped off it as at its destination. So at both ends of the tanker’s journey there have to be special facilities on land, such as pipes and storage tanks, to deal with the oil. The docks that have these facilities are called ‘oil terminals’.

Pipelines carry the crude oil to oil refineries. If any of the refined oil products are to be exported, then other pipelines carry these back to the oil terminal.