Oil and gas niche grows for Meihuzen

Meihuizen International’s ships agency division has entered into a profitable niche market in the West African oil and gas industry in alliance with its Angola-owned shipping principal, Angola South Line (ASL), according to Meihuizen director, Mark Kilbride. “Early this year,” he told FTW, “our principal was granted a feeder contract with the US oil giant, Chevron, for shipping the company’s US-sourced cargoes from Cape Town to Angola. “ASL is also linked into the Macs line for shipping cargoes from the Scottish oil city of Aberdeen, on the feeder leg from Cape Town to Angola.” These are serviced by three of ASL’s multi-purpose vessels, one of which regularly plies the scheduled feeder trade from the Mother City. The line’s ships frequently call at the Sonils oil terminal in Luanda, before moving across to the port’s commercial terminal. They also call at Chevron’s exclusive terminal at Malonga in Cabinda, and the Kwanda base at Soyo. On inducement, the ships will also call at the ports of Lobito and Namibe in Angola, Durban, and Walvis Bay in Namibia. Moving further afield, ASL also sails a feeder service carrying oil piping to the Malabo oil terminal on the island of Bioko in Equatorial Guinea. “We are also continually trying to expand further into general commercial cargo,” Kilbride said. “But we are somewhat limited by the small size of the vessels, which must be no more than 100 metres in length in order to berth at the small docks at the harbours they go into.”