BP Oil pulls assets out of Samoa

British Petroleum Oil has moved out of Samoa. In December the company completed removal of its bulk storage tanks from its Asau Bulk Fuel Terminal and shipped them to Tonga.

In a major engineering project supervised by senior BP engineers from Fiji and local BP manager Phillip Seti, the two huge tanks were dismantled, loaded onto a barge and shipped off. The tanks were re installed at BP’s Touliki Terminal in Nuku’alofa.

According to Seti, this was a carefully planned and detailed operation using experienced local and overseas contractors as well as skilled laborers from the surrounding Asau area.

“The whole project went according to plan and is a credit to all the people involved,” he said. Environmental experts from Australia surveyed the site and a plan is in place to ensure that the land is cleaned up before it is returned to the owners.

“Our environmental survey revealed no serious issues, just a little bit of surface contamination which is quite normal in depots of this age,” said Seti.

“Our Australian consultants are returning to undertake the clean-up process which will be conducted to NSW EPA standards, which are amongst the most stringent in Australia.”

BP Oil’s general manager, Craig Fullerton, expressed sadness over the removal of the Asau Terminal but said that BP needed to find a productive use for the idle tanks. “We are not allowed to use our assets in Samoa so we need to use them

somewhere else,” he said.

“Our business has

grown substantially

in Tonga and these tanks will assist us to ensure secure supply for our customers there.” After the Asau removal, BP turned its attention to their assets at Faleolo Airport, expecting to remove the last of its tanks from there and ship them to another location over a period of a few weeks.

Some of the other assets may be used to support HP’s new business at Pago Pago Airport. BP recently announced that it was taking over the supply and marketing business of Tesoro in

American Samoa early in 2000, which includes supply to Pago Pago Airport.

BP is still involved in legal proceedings against the government of Samoa over the government’s actions in awarding Mobil Oil the fuel supply contract in 1998. ■

Nothing to dance about. BP Oil has moved out of Samoa