£100 million needed for deep water berth

£100 million pounds needs to be spent on a new deepwater berth to secure future fuel imports according to captain peter gill the harbour master.this has been known about since 1993.

That is some huge wish list the States have now .......Oops we have no money !!!:lala1:

You been thinking again Dave (i told you about that) :) .The problem i have with that is SPP Harbor is getting over crowed as it is , the passenger boats (inter-island) have to wait to unload their passengers sometimes as much as 15 mins . This is not helped by putting a pontoon where the bon Marin used to dock so in essence there is only two points of embarkation/disembarkation .

The freight berth is always busy with the Isis etc. And with this hair-brained idea of building another posh marina would only add to the congestion ,with the trident then having to come into the main harbour.

Having said that i agree it would be a cheaper solution to the problem.

HaHa, i like your idea ,Dep Jones, just a couple of logistical problems though, where would you like the tankships to unload in St Peter Port?, they need a berth with discharge arms, to get the fuel off,then how exactly are you going to lay 12/18" pipelines to get the fuel to St Sampsons, 2 lines needed, and then how exactly are you going to be able to pump the fuel from one parish to another? this ain't a sh*tpipe in bellegreve we are talking about! These tankships have their own pumps onboard to discharge fuel, but somehow i dont think they could pump that distance! that is why tank farms are always close by to the berths.

Nice idea, but i think it was not really thought about , but maybe you do not have knowledge on shipping or fuel transportation, no offence meant ,Dave.

Where does the figure of £100M come from, has someone actually worked out a position for this birth and a cost or is it another guess made just to guage a reaction?

Hey, lets not kick the guy for trying to think laterally! I see what you mean about the pumps and arms etc, so it would appear Dave's idea is a non starter BUT in the North Sea, they do pick up oil from drilling rigs in deep water. What's to stop a similar arrangement here, in reverse?

Hi there Martini - nice to meet you and I am so glad you are not going to let the bastards grind you down :-)))))))

Thanks Karma! Many have tried in the past, and some even recently, but all have failed!

Goodonya :-)

I think that the £100 million talked about was to include freight berths as well, so transfering the commercial/freight aspect of St Peter Port to the new deep water berths. But as stated, that figure is probably a bit off the mark now!!

You could probably use 1/2 of the 100 mill just on all the consultants which no doubt will be fighting to rip off the Guernsey states again, lets be honest, the last 2 developments at St Sampsons have not exactly been on budget or done properly, ( one marina, and one fire main). Consultants and experts ?? money well spent on these consulants ??? i think not!

wayside wrote:Where does the figure of £100M come from, has someone actually worked out a position for this birth and a cost or is it another guess made just to guage a reaction?

30 m + 30m + 30 m oh add another 10 million = 100million

Correct me if I am wrong, but dont we need to spend a lot of money on the existing berths in town?
New cranes - Reinforcing the berths etc etc... how much is that going to cost?? and you want to put the fuel ships there as well??

Why cant we build a fixed pontoon off St Sampsons in deep water ... less of a run of pipes and would look a lot better than putting them across Belle Greve.

If we look at the safety aspect, what happens if a fuel boat goes bang.

Then we have 9 1/2 parishes instaed of 10, coz 1/2 of SPP will be gone!

Will this be one project in St Peter Port harbour that will come in 'on budget' or will it be a vast 'overspend' ?

Added to the fortune already spent on tankers ( a decision rushed through) would not all this money be better spent on measures aimed at reducing our oil usage - e.g. wave energy generation, subsidies for electric vehicles, usage of nuclear energy from France, etc. etc.?

And what happened to the prioritisation debate?

PS The money was spent to secure supplies and for no other reason.

Thank you for the reply. Although the Eur17mn was spent to secure supplies, you say that the price was a bargain, which implies a good deal for an investment. How are the ships being treated in the States' accounts - as assets or just as a very large "running cost"? Even if they are assets, I suspect that there will be significant annual depreciation charges, again a large cost, unless the residual value ( probably scrap) is a factor.
I am glad to hear we are largely dependent on French nuclear power ( I think!) but if so why the big panic about spending so much on oil supplies? Presumably the only other usage is for heating, but you mention that people are cutting down on dependency on oil. That only leaves vehicle fuel - and we all know that usage of that should be reduced!

I would assume that these ships are now being chartered, both to our fuel importers and to other suitable users, therefore they should be earning a profit if used correctly.

The panic to buy these ships would have been that without them we would have had no transport (public or private) food in the shops, followed by no gas and even electricity failures. Who knows from there?

IMHO buying these ships was one of the few sensible decisions made by this States.

I agree as a short term measure if it was that extreme, but it underlines that we should be looking at other energy sources so that we are not reliant on oil and having to spend multi millions on tankers, berths etc. And what if the oil starts running out or the price gets prohibitively high again?